Tesla Admits Its Cybertrucks Lose Their Value Insanely Fast
The struggles never seem to end for Tesla.
Elon Musk's embattled electric vehicle empire is floundering on its long-anticipated robotaxi launch as sales plummet to record lows and Tesla bulls dump their stocks.
Tesla's Cybertruck — the garish luxury all-electric truck — is no exception to the carnage. With a reputation for breaking down constantly and drawing the ridicule of just about every other driver on the road, the stainless steel tanks aren't exactly a popular choice for car buyers.
Earlier this month, news emerged that Tesla was sitting on over 10,000 unsold Cybertrucks, an estimated $800 million worth of inventory.
Now, Tesla has decided to start taking Cybertruck trade-ins after over a year of deliveries, and disgruntled customers are already revealing what Tesla is willing to pay for a used rig.
Though an AWD foundation series Cybertruck will set you back $100,000, Tesla's only willing to pay $65,400 to take it off your hands — and that's presumably if it has 6,000 miles or less on it, according to Electrek.
A screenshot of the trade-in estimate was obtained from a disgruntled poster in the Cybertruck Owners Club, noting that it gives the Cybertruck a depreciation rate of about 34.6 percent in just one year.
A typical pickup truck, claims Electrek, should take three to four years to lose that kind of value.
It's not exactly shocking news. The cracks had started to show as early as spring of 2024 — just months after Cybertrucks hit the market — as news of the EV's shoddy production quality became well-known. Back then, Tesla didn't accept returns, while resellers were understandably reluctant to get involved, sending the aftermarket price of a new Cybertruck into the toilet.
Of course, this is all in stark contrast to Musk's absurd claim that Tesla vehicles would only increase in value, a promise he made back in 2019.
"If you buy a Tesla today, I believe you are buying an appreciating asset, not a depreciating asset," he said in an interview.
The Cybertruck isn't the only floundering Tesla product. By last year, a 2021 Tesla Model 3 — which retailed for about $40,000 — was reselling for just $23,700, a 29 percent markdown compared to its price in 2023. The used-car average over the same period was just 19.5 percent, according to Edmons.com, a used car site.
Tesla is also facing fallout from a bizarre leasing program revealed by Reuters last week. Typically, customers will have an option to buy a car outright at the end of their lease. Instead, Tesla's internal policy made potential buyers send their cars back to Tesla, to be part of Musk's "robotaxi" network.
Of course, that robotaxi network has yet to actually materialize. In reality, those cars were being outfitted with the latest software updates and flipped to new buyers for much more than they would have sold to those wrapping up a lease.
Basically, the writing's on the wall: don't count on a new Tesla's value to go anywhere but down.
More on Tesla: Doomsday Preppers Say the Cybertruck Is a Horrible Choice for the End of the World
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
8 minutes ago
- CNBC
CNBC Daily Open: Elon Musk's companies report positive developments amid his return to work
In his first week away from the U.S. government's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk is seeing positive activity in his companies. His brain tech startup Neuralink announced a $650 million funding round, while his electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla in May enjoyed a 213% year-on-year jump in sales in Norway. Of course, the causal link between those events and Musk's departure from DOGE is tenuous. The funding process and sales duration occurred while Musk still had his hands full with the White House, and so could have happened with little — or none — of his leadership or input. But both serve as reminders why so many are Musk backers: His companies are, fundamentally, successful ones. But, like Tesla's promised full self-driving feature, Musk's firms aren't completely autonomous and need a steady— and ideally "super focused" — hand to guide them. Muted start to JuneU.S. stocks posted modest gains Monday, the first trading day of June. The S&P 500 advanced 0.41%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 0.08% and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.67%. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index fell 0.14%. Shares of Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk climbed 1.9% amid a U.S. ban on copycat weight loss drugs. Steel tariffs will hike U.S. pricesThe 50% tariff on steel imports that U.S. President Donald Trump announced Friday will push up prices of the metal in America, according to analysts. "Already steel prices in the U.S. are higher than anywhere else, and it is a net importer which needs to have volumes coming in. All this does is raise prices there," Josh Spoores, head of steel Americas analysis at CRU, told CNBC on Monday. Neuralink raised $650 millionElon Musk's Neuralink has closed a $650 million funding round, the brain tech startup announced Monday. ARK Invest, Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and other firms participated in the round, according to a press release. Neuralink is building a brain-computer interface, a system that translates brain signals into commands for external technologies. Tesla sales in Norway jumpTesla's sale of new cars in Norway skyrocketed 213% to 2,600 in May from a year earlier, according to official data. The increase was mostly driven by sales of the firm's revamped Model Y compact sport utility vehicle. That bucks a downward trend across Europe — industry groups on Monday reported significantly lower May sales for new Tesla vehicles in Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Sweden. [PRO] 'Anywhere But The USA'Seesawing trade policies, proposed foreign capital taxes and concerns over U.S. fiscal spending have given rise to a new trade: "Anywhere But the USA." It's a "recalibration toward global balance, cyclical recovery, and multi-polar growth," investment manager Ninety One's Alan Siow said. Here are some of the opportunities beyond the U.S. that investors and portfolio managers are looking at. In China, 'The Great American' burger is now made with Australian beef American agricultural products have been vanishing from Chinese stores and restaurants and losing ground to other imports. At his restaurant in Beijing, Geng Xiaoyun used to offer a special dish of salt-baked chicken feet — or "phoenix talons" as they are called in China — imported from America. "American chicken feet are so beautiful," Xiaoyun said. "They're spongy so they taste great. Chinese [chicken] feet just aren't as good." With prices climbing 30% from March due to tariffs, the owner of Kunyuan restaurant had to pull the Chinese delicacy from the menu.
Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Chatbot platform Character.AI unveils video generation, social feeds
A platform for chatting and role-playing with AI-generated characters, announced in a blog post on Monday that it is rolling out a slate of multimedia features. These features include AvatarFX, video-generation model, plus Scenes and Streams, which allow users to create videos featuring their characters and then share them on a new social feed. " started as 1:1 text chat and today we're evolving to do so much more, inspired by what our users have told [us] they want to see on the platform," the company wrote in the blog post. began rolling out AvatarFX to subscribers last month, but now all users can create up to five videos each day. When creating a video with AvatarFX, users can upload a photo to serve as the basis for the video clip, choose a voice, and write out dialogue for the character. There's an option to upload an audio clip to inform the sound of the voice, though this feature was not working well enough to test upon rollout. Users can turn these videos into Scenes, where their characters can slip into pre-populated storylines that other users create. Scenes are currently available on the mobile app, but Streams, which allows users to create "dynamic moments between any two Characters," is coming this week on both web and mobile. These Scenes and Streams can be shared to a new community feed, which is coming soon in the mobile app. has a track record of abuse on its platform; parents have filed lawsuits against the company, claiming chatbots attempted to convince their children to self-harm, to kill themselves, or to kill their parents. One 14-year-old boy died by suicide after he was encouraged to do so by a bot, with whom he had developed an unhealthy, obsessive relationship. As expands its multimedia offerings, it also expands the potential for these products to be abused. As told TechCrunch when it announced AvatarFX, the platform blocks users from uploading photographs of real people -- whether they're celebrities or not -- and obscures their likeness into something less recognizable. For example, here's uncanny valley version of Mark Zuckerberg: But when it comes to artwork depicting celebrities, does not flag the images as representing real people -- however, these sorts of depictions would be less likely to deceive someone into believing that a deepfake is real. Plus, watermarks each video, though it is possible for bad actors to navigate around that safeguard. Here is an example of an attempted deepfake based on an illustration of Elon Musk: testing the anti-deepfake guardrails on character ai's avatarfx Even if this video had been generated with Elon Musk's actual voice, it would still be relatively clear that this is an animated version of an illustration -- but the possibility for abuse remains evident. "Our goal is to provide an engaging space that fosters creativity while maintaining a safe environment for all," said in its blog post. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Unpacking rumor that Stephen Miller's wife, Katie, left him for Elon Musk
In late May and early June 2025, rumors swirled that the wife of White House adviser Stephen Miller, Katie Miller, had left him for tech magnate Elon Musk, who until then had served as the new U.S. Department of Government Efficiency's public face. Some internet users even suggested that the affair had started with Stephen Miller's consent in an arrangement some described as a "throuple." For example, user @ on Bluesky relayed these claims: (Bluesky user @ The post read: Oh I am not sh**posting, folks. Stephen Miller, his wife, and Elon are widely rumored to be a throuple. Now Miller's wife is leaving the Trump team to be with Musk & LITERALLY PER THE NEW YORK TIMES Stephen is angrily subtweeting Musk. They actually put it in the paper of record that he was mad The post on Bluesky had received 7,600 likes and 3,200 reshares as of this writing. The same rumor appeared several times on Bluesky, but also on X, where the official account of the Democratic National Committee tagged Miller in its post of a single empty chair in a supposed hotel room in reaction to rumors that Miller's wife had left government to work for Musk in the private sector (archived): The empty chair represented a meme known as the "cuck chair," a chair on which someone supposedly sits while they watch their spouse have sex with someone else. This post had amassed 2.1 million views and 32,000 likes as of this writing, further spreading the unsubstantiated claim that Miller had cheated on her husband with Musk. Snopes has reached out to the Miller couple and Musk, seeking details. However, because we were not able to confirm or disprove the story, we have left it unrated. The rumor started as Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of SpaceX, announced his departure from DOGE. Bluesky user Snyder (to whom we have reached out for comment and await a reply) referenced a New York Times story published on May 28, 2025, which indeed referenced Miller criticizing Musk on X without naming him. Miller posted on X (archived) in response to Musk lambasting the "One Big Beautiful" budget bill the U.S. House of Representatives had voted on, which experts, including analysts at the Tax Foundation, said would cause the budget deficit to balloon. The article read: However, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, shot back at Mr. Musk on social media without naming him. Mr. Miller asserted that the bill would reduce the deficit — despite multiple independent analyses saying otherwise — and noted that the cuts made by Mr. Musk's team were unrelated to the spending bill. Lower down in the thread on Bluesky, Snyder linked to a story published on Feb. 27, 2025, in Wired, which Snyder said "strongly implied throupledom." The story explained that while Stephen Miller had assumed the position of White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, his wife had been appointed as "top communications official at DOGE," directly with Musk. Citing an anonymous Republican source, the story went on to suggest that this had been by design: The Millers are seen inside Trumpworld as glorified babysitters for Musk, tasked with ensuring he stays within bounds, insofar as that's possible. "He gets a lot of grace," the first Republican said of Musk. "Many people aren't nervous, because Stephen Miller is deeply involved. And Katie." This Republican compared Musk to a preteen child. However, the Wired story implied more salacious suspicions about the relationship between the Millers and Musk without making them explicit: Musk's relationship with the Millers has become a subject of great intrigue in Washington as DOGE continues to wreak havoc on the federal government. Little is known about how often they interact outside of work and how the relationship grew over the late stages of the campaign into the transition. "If you can find out anything about Stephen Miller's social life, I don't wanna know the answer," says a longtime Republican operative who knows the couple personally. Given the anonymous sourcing, Snopes was unable to independently verify Wired's reporting. We have reached out to Snyder on Bluesky asking if the user heard the rumor independently. However, on May 28, 2025, a CNN report that Katie Miller had left DOGE to work for Musk full time gave new life to claims that the relationship between Musk and the pair was more complicated than it seemed. Citing three unnamed sources, CNN said Miller was now helping arrange interviews for Musk. Snopes was unable to independently verify CNN's reporting because it was based on anonymous sources. Though several internet users took it to mean that she had left her husband, with whom she shares three children, the reality is that Katie Miller had the status of "special government employee," which precluded her working more than 130 days per year for the U.S. government. As such, she would have had to leave government work regardless of which job she took on after her stint at DOGE. While she did not confirm the story, she had reshared on X one post by Musk regarding his departure from the government, as well as a screen capture of one of his quotes about DOGE, suggesting she may indeed be working as his spokeswoman. Two days later, on May 30, 2025, Musk stood in the White House Oval Office, speaking to the press alongside U.S. President Donald Trump about his return to the private sector. Musk appeared with a bruise around his right eye. While Musk said he owed his black eye to his son, whom he said he had instructed to punch him, the internet once again lit up with speculation (archived): The post had gained 2.7 million views and 41,000 likes as of this writing. Snopes reached out to the Millers as well as Musk asking them to provide further details. We will update this report should they respond. "'Big Beautiful Bill' House GOP Tax Plan: Preliminary Details and Analysis." Tax Foundation, 13 May 2025, Accessed 2 June 2025. "Elon Musk Bids Farewell to White House but Says Doge Will Continue." BBC, 29 May 2025, Accessed 2 June 2025. Hamilton, Phillip. "Cuck Chair." Know Your Meme, 15 Nov. 2022, Accessed 2 June 2025. Klein, Betsy, et al. "May 28, 2025 - Donald Trump Presidency News." CNN, 28 May 2025, Accessed 2 June 2025. Lahut, Jake. "Elon Musk's Takeover Is Being Aided by a Trumpworld Power Couple." WIRED, 27 Feb. 2025, Accessed 2 June 2025. Pager, Tyler, et al. "Elon Musk, Distanced from Trump, Says He's Exiting Washington and DOGE." The New York Times, 29 May 2025, Accessed 2 June 2025. Pogue, David, and Joe Walsh. "Elon Musk Says He's 'Disappointed' by Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' and What It Means for DOGE." CBS News, 28 May 2025, Accessed 2 June 2025. Siddiqui, Faiz, and Frances Vinall. "Musk Explains His Black Eye, Says He Told Son X to Punch Him." The Washington Post, 31 May 2025, Accessed 2 June 2025. "Summary of Government Ethics Rules for Special Government Employees." 27 Aug. 2014, Accessed 2 June 2025.
