I was staring at a registry list when a single row felt like a leak in a dam. SpaceX had logged 1,279 Cybertrucks — nearly one in five of the U.S. registrations — and suddenly the sales story changed tone. You read that right: Musk’s other companies are quietly padding a product that the market otherwise seems to be abandoning.
I’ve followed EV data for years; you learn to read the margins. The S&P Global Mobility figures, reported by Bloomberg, show SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company together made up a large slice of Cybertruck registrations in the three months ending December. That’s not a coincidence; it’s corporate demand meeting a product that consumers are passing on.
SpaceX logged 1,279 Cybertruck registrations in the quarter.
That number equals over 18% of the 7,071 Cybertrucks registered during the period. SpaceX alone is shouldering a haul that would make many fleets blush, and Musk’s other firms added about 60 more. At a base price of $69,990 (€65,091), those purchases push the tab into nine figures — Bloomberg estimates the buying likely tops $100 million (€93 million) and continued into this year.
I’m not guessing here; I checked the public registries and corporate fleet chatter. What looks like a sales spike is, in part, an internal demand funnel: the companies tied to Musk are diverting inventory that retail buyers aren’t taking. It’s a corporate lifeboat keeping a single model afloat while the broader market rows away.
Why did SpaceX buy so many Cybertrucks?
They’re replacing gasoline support vehicles, according to a post from the Cybertruck lead engineer on X and reporting from Electrek. For SpaceX, stowage, range, and the pickup’s utility make operational sense at Starbase and other sites. For Tesla, the buys are a short-term fix to slow inventory build-up and headline risk.
Cybertruck deliveries plunged 48% to 20,237 units in 2025.
That drop is stark: Tesla had once set expectations for as many as 250,000 Cybertrucks a year by 2025. Instead, buyers cooled off. Some of this is macro — U.S. EV demand softened after federal subsidies expired, and manufacturers from Detroit to Asia are rethinking their U.S. EV plans — but the Cybertruck’s case has its own quirks.
Studies suggest Musk’s political moves shifted consumer sentiment. A Yale and NBER analysis estimates his activism cost Tesla at least 1 million vehicle sales between October 2022 and April 2025. Another paper in Nature found that liberal buyers pulled back after seeing Musk’s public stance, while conservatives didn’t flock to EVs in response. The result is a pricing and perception squeeze around a product that once arrived with near-hysteria.
Are Cybertruck sales declining?
Yes; official data from Cox Automotive show Cybertruck sales fell 48% in 2025 to 20,237 units. That drop sits alongside a 9% decline in Tesla’s overall deliveries to 1,636,129 vehicles, while BYD delivered about 2.26 million EVs in 2025, up roughly 28% from the year before.
Tesla’s total deliveries fell 9% to 1,636,129 last year.
Tesla’s slipping momentum matters because the company’s scale was its defense in a tightening market. With BYD overtaking Tesla as the world’s largest EV seller and broader demand softening, the company has leaned on internal buyers. Electrek reported SpaceX might purchase as many as 2,000 Cybertrucks; photos of Cybertrucks at Starbase reinforce the pattern.
Tactically, using Musk-linked buyers reduces visible inventory and stabilizes unit metrics. Strategically, it raises questions: is this fleet demand a sound long-term channel or a cosmetic repair? I see it as a Band-Aid on a broken bone — it holds the wound closed but doesn’t fix the underlying fracture in consumer confidence.
How many Cybertrucks has Tesla sold?
Public figures show 20,237 Cybertrucks sold in 2025 and 7,071 registered in the last quarter reported by S&P Global Mobility. Musk’s earlier projection of 250,000 units a year did not materialize, and Tesla’s delivery charts reflect the shortfall.
There’s a final layer you should keep an eye on: brand-politics bleed. Platform moves on X, public donations, and high-profile roles have measurable sales impact in the data I use daily — and they map directly to consumer choices at dealerships and online configurators. That relationship won’t fix itself overnight, and a corporate purchasing loop only buys time.
I’ve watched companies try similar plays before; fleets can prop numbers, but they don’t create lasting retail momentum. If Musk’s companies keep buying, Tesla’s headline figures will look healthier than the market actually is — but for how long could soft retail demand be disguised by internal orders?