The Tesla strategy in 2024 seemed to be that they would tie public perception and fortunes of their Cybertruck to Trump’s madness and hate. Who can forget how the CEO arranged their strange partnership in 2016, which included preventing the NHTSA from reporting Tesla driverless deaths?
However, that plan has predictably backfired. Hate platforms necessarily narrow, and thus plummet, market value, which is exactly what we’re seeing.
Signals of the crash come as Tesla has been trying to slow its death spiral by artificially inflating values again. A Cybertruck buyback program is being setup to float numbers far higher than the market. Electrek attempts to make sense of what looms to be the biggest disaster in automotive sales history:
We previously reported that Tesla refused to accept the Cybertruck, its own vehicle, as a trade-in more than a year after starting deliveries.
Tesla didn’t share an explanation at the time, but we assumed that the automaker knew the Cybertruck was depreciating at an incredible rate and didn’t want to be stuck with more trucks than it was already dealing with.
Now, Tesla has started taking Cybertruck trade-ins, at least for the Foundation Series, and it is now providing estimates to Cybertruck owners… 34.6% depreciation in just a year.
On Car Guru, the Cybertruck’s depreciation is actually closer to 45% after a year [more than double the rate of other brands] and that’s more representative of the offers owners should expect from dealers.
That’s entirely Tesla’s fault.
To be fair, the elephant in the room is how the Trump platform of hate is owed a lot of blame for tanking American markets and products.
People absolutely hate Tesla now, especially Trump people who Tesla supported the most, due to the divisive competitive and selfish agendas that use saccharin narratives to stomp on former allies and paper over self-defeat.
…the president used to mention Musk every few days but now has not posted about him in more than a month. Trump’s fundraising operation has largely ceased sending emails that name-check the Tesla CEO. The billionaire’s name, once a staple of White House briefings, now hardly gets mentioned at all. Even members of Congress have essentially dropped him… Republicans still speak favorably of Musk when asked about him.
Dropped him. Depreciated him. Still speak favorably when asked.
The Japanese have how many ways of saying yes, just to avoid saying the word no because that would undermine social heirarchy? 考えておきます
Better for the GOP to say nothing about Tesla now, apparently, and act like Trump wasn’t the guy just sitting in the driver seat who just sent the company into a tree and burned Elon Musk to death.
“Still love the truck, though” became a meme that represented the unthinking, know-nothing, foundations of the American mentality of dismissing intelligence and undermining progress. Cybertruck loyalists, who early on claimed appreciation of value was their reason for buying, now claim they will be holding on infinitely to maximize returns in a sunk cost. At least they will have a lot of spare parts available, until Tesla starts its scrap metal program and calls it the future of robotics.