Where have all the Cybertrucks gone?

For a while it seemed like Tesla Cybertrucks were everywhere. Then they weren’t.

This spring we got satellite imagery of Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory where the Cybertrucks are made. Scans of lots that hold finished Teslas quickly revealed hundreds of Cybertrucks stashed outside the factory — their large rectangular profiles making them easily recognizable from space.

Already sales of Cybertruck had begun to flag, so it seemed Tesla was stuck with the extras.

But when we checked satellite images of Tesla’s Texas parking lots again this summer, however, the stainless steel behemoths were no longer so apparent. What happened?

A few things.

CEO Elon Musk once said he could sell 250,000 to 500,000 of the “apocalypse-proof” trucks a year, but in the year and half since production began, the company has sold only 50,000 in total — roughly half the number of Model Ys it sold in North America, where Cybertrucks are available, last quarter — and rather than continue to amp up production, Tesla is already cutting back.

While Tesla doesn’t break out Cybertruck production and deliveries, an analyst who goes by Troy Teslike was able to glean that information from VIN and registration data. He estimates Tesla sold only ~5,000 Cybertrucks last quarter — about a third of the number it was delivering two quarters earlier, in Q4. Tesla didn’t mention the Cybertruck by name on its most recent earnings call.

People have continued to buy fewer Cybertucks, despite steep discounts. For what it’s worth, Rivian has replaced the Cybertruck as the “it” car in the tony Hamptons, and the Tesla trucks themselves have been the subject of vandalism.

In response to the lower sales, the company has been producing fewer trucks. In Q2 it produced about 5,700 Cybertrucks, less than half the number it was making in Q4. Last month, Tesla paused production at its Texas Gigafactory for the second time in two months and has been reallocating workers from the Cybertruck lines to the better-selling Model Y. So it’s likely the company’s restrained production is helping deal with the excess supply spotted by satellites in the spring. Indeed, back in the first quarter, when we saw the stashes outside Tesla’s factory, Cybertruck production outpaced deliveries by nearly 4,000. Last quarter, that imbalance was around 640, per Teslike’s numbers. (Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding Cybertruck production and sales.)

Tesla may have also concluded that storing Cybertruck inventory in a single spot is very noticeable. There now appear to be fewer Cybertrucks compared to the previous satellite images, and the ones that are there are scattered among other types of Teslas like Model Ys, making them less obvious. Recent drone footage from Tesla enthusiast Joe Tegtmeyer also supports this conclusion. It’s also possible that because the second image we got is less clear, it’s simply harder to spot Cybertrucks on the lot.

Or maybe the unsold Cybertrucks are instead stashed in parking lots that don’t belong to Tesla. (Over the company’s entire history, the data shows that Tesla has produced about 11,000 more Cybertrucks than it’s sold — and they’ve got to be somewhere.)

Take a look at this image slider, where you can compare a finished Tesla vehicle lot in March to what it looked like more recently in July: