Aster Tesla's service center tried to extort us to receive a safety recall appointment time, we decided we were done with them.
We had a recall we called to try and schedule several times, and they always said, "we have no appointments available right now, but if you want to pay $400 for a new center console computer part too, we can get you in this week."
Shady.
(FWIW the car itself had so many issues. It didn't seal, so at highway speeds it would cause pressure waves inside, the door handles broke a bunch, the dashboard would regularly crash and need to be rebooted and we'd lose the speedometer, a bunch of fit and finish issues like threads that dangled from panels... and more)
A lucky break for Tesla, which is now a check notes robotics company. If it had been a success it would have taken their attention away from innovation in a truly profitable business space and they'd just be a car company.
I took my model Y in to the Tesla dealer yesterday for some minor repairs. It was taking longer than expected so they gave about 4 or 5 customers loaner cars so we could go do other stuff. Each of us got a Cybertruck.
It sort of speaks to the fact that it isn’t selling well that they are using them for loaners.
It's like the PT Cruiser that we had no choice to accept after arriving at the airport late at night (in the 2000s), since all of the more appealing cars were taken. Chrysler had to sell its excess inventory to someone, and rental car companies bought them for a song.
>The EV company sold fewer than 39,000 Cybertrucks in 2024, according to Cox Automotive data — far below the company’s eventual goal of 250,000 per year. As of October, Tesla had delivered just 17,317 units in 2025, a 42% drop compared to the same period in 2024.
Not mentioned in the article is that the truck isn't built as originally promised. The exoskeleton was supposed to do away with the need for an internal frame, giving it weight and cost advantages. Turned out they couldn't make it work for production, so it's built like a normal vehicle.
A normal carmaker would have shown the cybertruck as a concept, and the final product would have whatever compromises necessary to make it a successful production car. Tesla promised it would look exactly like that and took deposits, so they stuck with the weird design even after the engineering reason for it was gone.
What happens when sales just stop? I can’t imagine what it would look like if it were discontinued after only 2–3 years. Although, it might be smart to start shifting resources away from the Cybertruck and toward developing something else.
It's a bit encouraging to read about Edison's flops too. All my failures have just been preparation! One was a kind of 1890 Optimus, dolls he called "little monsters" with a built in miniature phonograph.
I am impressed by how much of commercial success is a matter of the product's tastefulness. Chamath Palihapitiya said this and I have to agree. It is easy to Dunning-Kruger your business to death without it.
Edison was one of the greatest humans who ever lived and contributed more to all of us than any other person in the last millenia.
It's popular on the far left to try armchair criticize the greatest humans, but it doesn't alter the facts.
Thomas Edison's biggest inventions include the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera. He also created the first commercial electric light and power system and is credited with improvements to the telephone, most notably the carbon microphone.
I can't fathom being this exaltant about some dead guy I've never met who supposedly manufactured some stuff (like you realize he wasn't a scientist and was primarily a businessman).
Where does this kind of sycophancy/worship come from? Like do you have to be bread to think this way or did your parents inculcate it in you? Or did you come to it on your own? Are you religious too? Is that where it comes from (tendency to worship)?
What qualifies someone as “one of the greatest humans who ever lived” is very subjective, particularly when their inventions would have been invented around the same time by someone else if they hadn’t done so.
Humans are multi-faceted, and can be good at some things but really, really bad at others.
For example, Elon Musk is really good at marketing his products, but he is extraordinarily bad at being a father. There are many men in prison who are better fathers.
We had a recall we called to try and schedule several times, and they always said, "we have no appointments available right now, but if you want to pay $400 for a new center console computer part too, we can get you in this week."
Shady.
(FWIW the car itself had so many issues. It didn't seal, so at highway speeds it would cause pressure waves inside, the door handles broke a bunch, the dashboard would regularly crash and need to be rebooted and we'd lose the speedometer, a bunch of fit and finish issues like threads that dangled from panels... and more)
Biggest waste of an opportunity I've encountered.