In Memoriam: The Cybertruck

The Cybertruck, the vehicle of choice for guys who like to say “my pronouns are U, S, and A” and—if they ever did find a woman who wanted to have sex with them—would throw an absolute fit over being asked to wear a condom, is being taken out back and told to think about the rabbits after only three years on the market. Elon Musk—the Tesla CEO most recently in the headlines for spending half a billion dollars to have his ass handed to him in the midterm elections by a blue wave of young progressives and populists whose platforms weirdly did not include any of his pet issues like “starting a race war”—announced that Cybertruck production would be “winding down” on X, a social media platform he bought in 2022 so as to render it absolutely useless for virtually anything except nonconsensual pornography and shitposting. According to Musk (the world’s most reliable narrator), this change is simply “to make room for increased Cybercab production.” Totally by coincidence, “Cybertruck sales declined 48 percent from 2024 to 2025” and were down 28 percent from January through September 2026, as the Associated Press reports. All Tesla sales nosedived at the start of 2025—“its worst showing since 2022 and ... far lower than analysts’ predictions”—numbers Wedbush Securities described as “a disaster on every metric.” Visually, the Cybertruck asked and answered pressing questions. Questions like: What if a hammerhead shark were also a microwave? What if the abstract concept of “toxic masculinity” took on a physical form? Can a car be so powerfully off-putting that it makes your wife divorce you? Can a person communicate, solely through their chosen mode of transit, where they were on January 6, 2021? We do not yet live in a society where we can recall cars for being hideous. But no matter: Within six months of its debut, the Cybertruck was recalled four times for more material concerns, namely that the construction of these trucks was exceptionally shoddy and likely life-threatening. Trim pieces on the truck bed could detach, becoming a road hazard, as they were not properly adhered to the vehicle; a light bar could also detach and be a risk to other motorists and pedestrians. In April 2024, nearly 4,000 Cybertrucks were recalled after it was found that the accelerator pedal could become stuck—I’ll let you put duh and duh together on the likely consequence of that pesky hiccup. Last March, Tesla had to yank nearly every single Cybertruck off the road because of a stainless steel exterior panel that could fly off and, you guessed it, injure and/or kill people. But even when construction went according to plan, the Cybertruck was destined to be a deathly menace. Safety experts argued that the stainless steel truck was dangerous by design—they didn’t say anything about how it was also really ugly, but I just think that bears repeating: It’s so unbelievably ugly—but Musk, demonstrating his characteristic empathy and concern for his fellow man, assured would-be Cybertruck drivers, “If you have an argument with another car, you will win.” Famously, car crashes have “winners” and “losers” and everyone’s ideal scenario in a car crash is not only to “win” but to also have committed vehicular manslaughter. Musk evidently did not consider that Cybertrucks would also endanger their own drivers and passengers, but they did: When only 60,000 Cybertrucks had been sold, there had already been five known fires involving four harrowing fatalities. As The Guardian reported, “Cybertrucks have locked passengers inside and burned so hot they’ve disintegrated drivers’ bones.” Trapping passengers inside its fire-prone vehicles and burning them alive is something of a Tesla specialty, but the particulars of the Cybertruck’s design were even worse than Musk’s average offering. The windows—ironically, given that during a launch event, an attempt to demonstrate the windows’ impenetrability resulted in them shattering onstage—are tougher to break than a standard car window, which is all well and good until you are trying to, say, escape from a burning car when the doors won’t unlock, as was the case in a horrible crash in Piedmont which killed three college students who “asphyxiated in a fire that had exploded at the truck’s front hood after the collision.” A witness who tried to help them was unable to open the car doors, whose electronic buttons weren’t functioning. (There are no door handles on the outside of a Cybertruck.) Tesla Cybertrucks are (or, I should say, were) produced in Texas, a state which Musk tried, and failed, to keep in Republican hands. Instead, Democrats won literally every statewide office. James Talarico became the first Democrat to win statewide office in more than 30 years and Gina Hinojosa defeated Greg Abbott in the governor’s race—and, per the New York Times: “Every county in Texas shifted left.”The Cybertruck is survived by Musk, whose unconscionable wealth—net worth: $860 billion, give or take—means he has the means to torment us once more with whatever dumb fucking idea he has next, unless someone in our maybe-soon-to-be-functioning government wants to do something about that. Still, it is important to take our wins where we can get them, and watching Musk fail is one such victory. In trying to embody the spirit of Henry Ford, Musk succeeded only philosophically (by being a Nazi) but not practically (by building a functioning automobile).