Elon Musk Reportedly Using SpaceX Orders To Boost The Cybertruck's Dismal Sales

When the Cybertruck first went on sale, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that by 2025, the company would be selling 250,000 incEl Caminos a year. The only problem is, it's currently the end of 2025, and Tesla hasn't sold anywhere close to that number. Last we heard, there were only about 63,000 Cybertrucks in existence, with Q3 2025 sales sitting around 5,400. Turns out, there are only so many extremely divorced men in the country who can afford (and want) an $80,000 electric truck that looks like a dumpster. But don't worry, Electrek reports Tesla's balance sheet has a savior: Elon's other company, SpaceX.

If this all sounds familiar, that's because Electrek reported something similar a few months ago. At the time, though, it said SpaceX had taken delivery of "hundreds if not thousands" of Cybertrucks, which is a pretty wide range. Fast forward to today, and "a source familiar with the matter" has now told Electrek that SpaceX has bought more than 1,000 Cybertrucks and may eventually end up with a fleet of more than 2,000. Doing some quick math and assuming SpaceX only bought the base version, that's more than $80 million in sales from SpaceX alone. Doubling that would be about $160 million.

Some would say it's unethical for the CEO of one company to order a second company to prop up the first company's sales with unnecessary orders, but remember, this is Elon Musk we're talking about. Nothing about his actions over the past several years, and really, the entire time he's been at Tesla, suggests he cares one bit about ethics. Also, he's made sure SpaceX is stocked with enough loyalists that no one is going to push back when he tells them to do something. Especially since this scheme doesn't appear to be illegal.

It also says a lot about how terrible Cybertruck sales are for Musk to use SpaceX to juice end-of-year sales figures by, at most, 2,000 units. He was supposed to be selling 250,000 of them a year, not (maybe) 20,000. SpaceX's fleet of Cybertrucks probably did help clear out some excess inventory that would have been sitting on the balance sheet, but beyond that, it isn't doing much. It's not like there's that much of a difference in selling 21,000 Cybertrucks in a year instead of 19,000. It's still a total flop.

Plus, while we're at it, why does Elon care about Cybertruck sales in the first place? He already told us Tesla is now an AI and robotics company that will solve autonomy and soon sell a humanoid robot to every single person on earth. He already told investors who think of Tesla as a car company to sell their shares. Should he not just be focused on the robot that's supposedly going to turn Tesla into a $5 trillion company? Cybertruck sales are table stakes here, especially when Tesla's investors clearly don't care about the car business either. 

Is it possible Elon might have exaggerated his claims that true, camera-only autonomy is just around the corner and that his robots are almost ready to replace human workers? No, that can't be right. Elon? Stretch the truth? I just can't believe it.