Tesla has launched the Cybertruck in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), marking a second international market in as many months, following the electric pickup truck’s commercial flop in the US.
Love it or hate it, you can’t deny that the Cybertruck has been a commercial flop.
Tesla had accumulated over 1 million reservations for the vehicle and planned for a production capacity of 250,000 units per year, with CEO Elon Musk saying that it could be increased to 500,000 units.
After Tesla unveiled the production version with a much higher price than initially announced and a significantly shorter range, demand plummeted, and now Tesla is struggling to sell the truck at a rate of 25,000 units per year – a tenth of the production capacity.
For the first 2 years of being on the market, Cybertruck was only available in North America (US, Canada, and Mexico).
Last month, Tesla announced that Cybertruck is coming to South Korea, with reservations being converted to orders.
It was a curious market to expand to, considering pickup trucks are not particularly popular in South Korea. However, Tesla is very well-received in the market, where the automaker has not suffered from brand damage due to its CEO, unlike in Europe and Canada.
Now, Tesla has also announced the launch of the Cybertruck in the United Arab Emirates (UAE):
UAE is fairly opaque with its passenger vehicle sales, but delivery estimates put Tesla’s volumes in the country between 5,000 and 10,000 units per year.
There are about 11 million people living in UAE and they buy roughly 200,000 new passenger vehicles per year.
Top comment by Andrew Gould
"After Tesla unveiled the production version with a much higher price than initially announced and a significantly shorter range, demand plummeted"
None of these helped but the CEO became openly political (in opposition to nearly all of its customers) and then after turning off its existing customer base, turned against the other side publicly which alienated the rest of the population. Remove the political turn of Elon Musk and you likely could have convinced 10% of your loyal existing customer base to buy one instead of another model. That wouldn't have got it to 250k units/year but it would have got it closer to Model S levels. I think Elon's action sunk the Cybertruck far more than the product itself (polarizing design and all).
Chinese automakers have entered the market and disrupted it quite a bit.
Electrek’s Take
South Korea and the UAE are some of the rare, somewhat significant car markets that are not too affected by Elon Musk’s brand damage.
To me, it looks like Tesla is testing the waters there to see how many Cybertrucks it could unload.
If successful, Tesla may be able to afford to keep the program going for a bit, but I don’t see a future in the Cybertruck unless the automaker can bring significant improvements in a second generation that would be closer to what was initially unveiled in 2019.
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