Ever since it was conceived, the Tesla Cybertruck has had a lot of buzz surrounding its integrity, value, and engine power. Elon Musk presented the project in 2019 when he destroyed the window of the car to make people see its resistance, and it failed because it was supposed to be indestructible, and the window that got hit on stage wasn’t. The project was delayed to 2021, and after that, it was once again postponed, debuting only in 2023 with big controversies following the thousands of sales in the United States.
Tesla is giving presents to Cybertruck owners
After delaying the launch for two years, Tesla had promised the model’s price would start at $39,900, but when it truly came out, the most basic model was over $60,000. Although the prices were very different, there were millions of people waiting to see the car in the real world, and many of them paid the full price with the help of celebrities who bought the car in pre-sale and received the vehicle first, like Cardi B and Kim Kardashian.
The truck had over a million reservations, and when it finally came out in 2023 only over 46,000 were delivered. Soon it became more available, but the car lost relevance and the ones being in sale by third parties were barely used. At the beginning of 2025, the company had about $200 million in Cybertrucks sitting around at the Gigafactory in Austin, Texas.
Elon Musk had to do something about it, and to start cleaning up all the buzz around the prices and availability of the product, Tesla started to offering a trade-in for the Cybertrucks, allowing the vehicle owners to receive a credit toward the purchase of a new car. The move allows the company to regain the control over the sales of the cars, taking off the hands of a secondary market.
The model suffered a big price depreciation
One of the reasons for this move was the depreciation of the car after only a couple of months of use. In average, an all-wheel-drive Cybertruck purchased for about $100,000 after barely 20,000 miles was estimated at over $63,000. This shows a depreciation of 37%. In parallel, a regular pickup truck wouldn’t be at this level with three years of regular use, and the fact that is an electric vehicle weights even more.
According to a iSeeCars study, from March 2024 to February 2025 had the biggest depreciation yet, with 58.8% in a span of five years of use – 800,000 5-year-old electric cars were in the study. The market challenges for the Cybertruck were tough. Not only had it not delivered what it was promised by Elon Musk, but the car was not built for regular use like others from the company, like Tesla Model Y or Model 3, its most famous and best-selling cars.
Elon Musk’s personality role in depreciation
The political controversy from Elon Musk’s persona may have also played a role in the price depreciation. The owner is very active in the social media, specially on X – formerly named Twitter and rebranded after Musk bought the company, and it’s constantly being vocal about political issues from the United States and other countries, even getting into a discussion with Brazil’s most powerful judge in the Supreme Court, which led the social media to be banned from the country for a couple of weeks.
The owners of the truck were often harassed, with numerous reports of vandalism, sometimes with politically charged messages. On the other hand, Tesla is moving in different directions and constantly evolving the technology of its vehicles. Recently, the company took a big step to launch its first driverless cab in Austin, but the NHTSA had to intervene.