With the Tesla Cybertruck falling well short of sales projections, the company may consider building a smaller pickup.
At an “X Takeover” event in San Mateo, California, Tesla powertrain head Lars Moravy was asked if the company saw a market niche for a smaller pickup.
He answered, “We always talked about making a smaller pickup. I think in the future, as more and more of the Robotaxi comes into the world, we look at those options and we think about, ‘Okay, that kind of service is useful not just for people, but also for goods.’ ”
He fell well short of promising a new model, saying only, “We’ve definitely been churning in the design studio about what we might do to serve that need.”
Moravy’s statements echo a 2019 comment in which CEO Elon Musk noted that the company might eventually pursue “a smaller Cybertruck.”
EV Pickups Have Been a Hard Sell so Far
- The Cybertruck fell well short of Tesla’s promised 1 million sales
- Rival automakers haven’t had much success with electric trucks, either
Electric trucks have proven a difficult niche for automakers to fill. Cybertruck sales briefly spiked after its 2023 debut, becoming the best-selling vehicle in America priced over $100,000 by that summer. They have since collapsed, with Tesla’s overall sales falling regularly since February of 2023.
The much more conventionally styled Ford F-150 Lightning, meanwhile, has become America’s best-selling electric pickup, entering the top 10 electric vehicle (EV) sales list last quarter.
There’s a Dearth of Smaller EV Trucks
- The smallest electric truck for sale today is still relatively large
- A startup, Slate Auto, plans the only compact electric truck revealed to date
A smaller Tesla truck could fill an almost-empty space in the market.
Almost every electric pickup for sale in the U.S. today is a full-fize model. Only the midsize Rivian R1T fits into a smaller space. Rivian’s model is large for a midsize vehicle, but smaller than other electric trucks.
Slate Auto, a startup partly funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, plans a compact EV pickup for the 2027 model year.
However, Tesla has publicly shifted away from new cars, betting its future on automated robotaxis instead. The company canceled a long-planned inexpensive Model 2 in 2024. It then spent months teasing a possible lower-priced model, only to reveal last week that the promised vehicle would just be a less-expensive version of its current best-selling vehicle.
