Tesla’s Inventory of Unsold Cybertrucks Skyrockets, Despite Offering $10K Discounts and Concealing Listings

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Tesla’s struggles to sell Cybertrucks seem to have taken a sharp turn for the worse, according to a new report that reviewed inventory listings of the unsold electric vehicles.

Tesla has been struggling with crashing sales numbers worldwide as CEO Elon Musk’s political views and role with DOGE in President Donald Trump’s administration have repelled many of the people who might otherwise be inclined to buy an electric vehicle.

Industry reports in February showed that Tesla sales of all models fell worldwide last year, even though overall sales of EVs were increasing. The high cost for many Tesla models is a limiting barrier for consumers, and the Cybertruck, which starts at a base price of about $80,000 up to more than $100,000 for many models, has been particularly plagued with safety concerns, quality complaints, and a series of embarrassing recalls.

Trump’s tariffs have walloped the Tesla, Inc. stock price, with the shares taking more of a beating than most other tech stocks during the market bloodbath that followed the president’s announcement. Tesla may yet suffer another brutal blow at the hands of Trump; one of his policy initiatives is to end the emissions regulatory credits that have raked in billions of dollars in revenue for the electric vehicle manufacturer.

A Forbes editor who covers the electric vehicle market dubbed the Cybertruck “Elon’s Edsel” and “the auto industry’s biggest flop in decades” at the beginning of April; it’s accelerated on a downward spiral since then.

A new article by Electrek editor-in-chief Fred Lambert spells out how brutal the numbers have become for the Cybertruck. It should be noted that Electrek and Lambert personally have faced sharp criticism over the years for perceived bias in favor of Tesla. Lambert has taken a more skeptical tone towards the company recently; a tweet last week stated that he has been “directly lied to by Tesla and Musk several times” so now he “never take[s] what they say at face value anymore.”

It was reported in April that about 2,400 new Cybertrucks — representing about $200 million in inventory — were languishing unsold, leading the company to refuse to accept them as trade-ins and other used car dealers finding them unappealing and making only low-ball offers.

Now that inventory “has skyrocketed to a new record high of more than 10,000 units,” wrote Lambert, leaving the entire Cybertruck program “in crisis.”

The data comes from Tesla-Info.com, which compiles the publicly posted listings of each Tesla model. A graph with just the Cybertruck numbers shows several sharp spikes in unsold inventory over the past few months, from 1,000 to about 2,500 in mid-March, to almost 6,000 in mid-April, to the current figure of more than 10,000.

Image via Tesla-Info.com

Lambert was highly skeptical the extra inventory was from manufacturing more Cybertrucks, citing “low demand” as the cause for why “[i]t already  looks like Tesla has slowed Cybertruck production down to a crawl,” adding that he “wouldn’t be surprised if it pauses it soon.”

And the true number could be even grimmer, Lambert explained. “Sometimes, Tesla may have many vehicles with the exact same configuration at the same location and it will only publish a single listing for it.”

The surge in listings was due to a new wave of discounts Tesla had rolled out to bring in buyers, some over $10,000, Lambert believed. Because these discounts varied widely, it increased the diversity of prices for each location’s Cybertrucks and forced them to post additional listings.

“This is about as bad as it gets,” wrote Lambert. Over 10,000 unsold Cybertrucks represent about 25 percent of all Cybertrucks ever sold, and is roughly how many Tesla sells during two quarters. “At an average sale price of $78,000, Tesla could have almost $800 million worth of Cybertrucks.”