Tesla’s 3-day Cybertruck shutdown is another blow to Elon Musk

Elon Musk is having a terrible, no good, very bad week.

First a judge struck down a stock grant that Musk persuaded Tesla shareholders to give him, in part by threatening to leave the company. That grant, originally worth around $50 billion, would now be $100 billion, thanks to a post-election rally for the company whose owner went all-in for the next president.

$100 billion: even for the world’s richest man, currently worth $333 billion, that’s real money. The grant would have doubled Musk’s lead over the world’s second-richest man, Jeff Bezos, in the all-important billionaires list.

But news that is subtly worse for Musk’s long-term prospects just leaked out of Tesla’s Austin factory: Cybertruck production appears to be ramping down. Workers on the vehicle’s assembly line have been told that there’s no need to report to work for 3 days.

According to Business Insider, which has four sources on the factory floor, this comes on the heels of several similar slowdowns in October. Not to mention an increase in cleaning and training duties to fill their hours, and a sharp decrease in overtime offers.

Tesla hasn’t yet commented on the reason for the slowdown, but this is not what you would expect to see from a carmaker with a hit on its hands. Automotive companies usually see most of their sales in the spring, when potential customers get tax refunds and driving conditions improve. So if Tesla execs were anticipating banner sales in a few months, the Cybertruck factory should be cranking right this minute.

You wanna buy a Cybertruck?

Instead, Cybertruck inventory seems to be backed up — never a good sign when your job as a business is to shift it. Especially not good if you had two million pre-orders, because it suggests nearly all of those pre-orders, bar 50,000 or so, weren’t serious. (Which, given that potential customers only had to put down a $100 deposit, seems a likely outcome.)

Normally, you shift inventory by lowering price. Tesla has instead raised the average price of the Cybertruck (the cheapest trim vanished from its website in August), even as its 350-mile range turns out to be lower than Musk promised.

This isn’t just a detail for car nerds to care about. Because if there’s any non-Trump-related fundamental driving Tesla stock growth at the moment, it’s the uptick in Cybertruck sales (while other Tesla models have seen flat or diminishing market share). Some 28,000 of the oddly angular vehicles were sold in the first 3 quarters of 2024, according to estimates by Cox Automotive (Tesla doesn’t break out its sales figures).

Analysts, in the aggregate, expected 48,500 Cybertrucks sold this year, so that’s not a bad showing — certainly better than rival electric trucks from Rivian and Ford.

But here’s the $100 billion question: Will Tesla get anywhere close to selling 250,000 Cybertrucks a year? That’s the production capacity Musk has insisted on, and effectively bet the future of Tesla on. Given that the Cybertruck isn’t for sale outside North America — and given its trouble with regulators in Europe and China, it isn’t likely to happen any time soon — Musk’s bet is almost entirely focused on the U.S. truck market.

Two million pickups are sold every year, so it seems reasonable to assume Tesla can grab an eighth of that total. But can it? Or is reality about to overwhelm Musk’s “if you build it they will come” approach?

The Cybertruck has seen six recalls in 2024, a massive number in the car business. The most recent was just this month — thanks to a faulty part that may cause, wait for it, a loss of power to the wheels.

You have to squint really hard to see the Cybertruck as anything other than the butt of recall-related jokes. Every week seems to bring with it a new report of Cybertruck owner woes on social media, from an expensive case of leaking oil to a massive systems failure during an outing for a protein shake. This winter may bring worse news for Musk, judging by the Canadian Cybertruck owner whose vehicle died after two hours of use, while he was trying to defrost it.

At least there is one silver lining for Musk. If Cybertruck sales are falling off a cliff, and if they start to take Tesla shares down with them, at least the stock grant Musk missed out on will be worth less than $100 billion. The question is, will he?