Tesla had high hopes for the oddly shaped electric pickup when it was announced, but in the roughly 18 months since it went into production, the vehicle has failed to gain sufficient popularity in North America, and regulatory barriers have hampered its distribution outside the continent. The company began cutting back Cybertruck production volumes back in December.
Image Source: Tesla
This was reported to Business Insider by sources familiar with Tesla’s manufacturing operations due to their involvement in them. These pickups are assembled in Texas at the company’s headquarters, and it began reducing production volume targets back in December last year. Some lines involved in the assembly of the Cybertruck are operating at a level far from full capacity. The number of personnel involved in core operations has been reduced by more than half in some cases. The released workers are being redirected to the assembly of Model Y crossovers, which is carried out at the same American plant.
The redistribution of human resources can be judged even by the appearance of free parking spaces for Tesla employees near the plant in Austin. As analysts at Cox Automotive suggest, Tesla sold 6,406 Cybertruck pickups in the first quarter of this year, which is two times less than in the fourth quarter. Before the start of production of this model, Elon Musk claimed that the company he headed had more than 1 million pre-orders for the Cybertruck. Judging by the data of the recall campaign from March 20 of this year, in fact, it managed to release no more than 50,000 cars of this model. In April, the most affordable version of the Cybertruck with rear-wheel drive costing $ 70,000 entered the market. All this does not prevent Elon Musk from promising to double the volume of electric car production in the United States in the next two years. Since February, according to sources, Tesla has been reducing the number of personnel in production, but so far its scale is not so large.