Elon Musk is resorting to one of the oldest tricks in the book, robbing Peter to pay Paul, to boost demand for Cybertrucks.
Electrek reported how Musk is using one of his companies, SpaceX, to help make up for a major lack of market for the controversial Cybertruck.
Tesla faces challenges selling even 20,000 Cybertrucks a year, far short of Musk’s initial projections of 500,000, according to Electrek analysis. As a result, Tesla is left with large stockpiles of vehicles even as they have greatly reduced their production.
Making a small dent in the inventory is SpaceX. The company has already purchased more than 1,000 Cybertrucks with room to double its fleet. User X shared a video of a lot filled with vehicles.
With a starting retail price of $80,000, the SpaceX purchase could net anywhere between $80 million and $160 million in sales for Tesla.
As Electrek pointed out, there is nothing illegal about Musk’s machinations here. Still, essentially having to save a failing product is not good news for Tesla nor the best move for SpaceX.
Investors should certainly be concerned that Musk’s moves here are autonomous. There’s also the issue of SpaceX getting huge government aid, and then turning around and buying Cybertrucks.
“In other words, the government subsidies that were meant to get us back to the moon are being used to buy unsalable trucks that look like big dumpsters,” he commented in frustration on Electrek.
Musk’s struggles to move Cybertrucks provide another example of over-promising and under-delivering. Before it was released, the vehicle had more than a million reservations. A mere 60,000 of these were converted into sales.
Electrek gave this failure to Tesla bait-and-switch consumers after unveiling their 2019 prototype. The current Cybertruck costs more, has less range, and boasts fewer attractive features.