When Tesla launched the Cybertruck in 2023, it was the four -year product of media threshing. The Boxy electric pick-up was the first new model in the company since 2020. Kim Kardashian, Pharrell Williams and Justin Bieber were seen while driving. With a million people on the truck booking list and a price of $ 120,000, it quickly became a symbol of status.
Less than two years later, the waiting list has disappeared. Trucks accumulate in sales areas. Less than 50,000 vehicles have been delivered. Some owners have become political targets thanks to the CEO Elon Musk association with President Donald Trump.
Enter a calm brand change.
In recent months, Tesla has moved to position the Cybertruck as a vehicle of a man who works – less Delorean, plus Ford F -150. The company has updated its website, abandoning an aesthetics of another world for images that include the transport equipment of trucks and an Airstream trailer. And the company’s sales workers told Business Insider that it had become increasingly difficult to move the sales prizes truck. The vehicle, they said, must call on the buyer of traditional trucks.
“The truck throw is more on functionality,” said a seller who works in the South. “They want to know how much it can tow, how much can hold in the truck bed.”
While the company is preparing to offer profits in the first quarter, it faces slow delivery numbers, a brand crisis and a stock market price more than 43% for one year to date – and is looking for a boost.
“They first pushed too hard in the aesthetics out of the world,” Ivan Drury, director of the automotive research company, told Business Ivan Drury. “This does not call on the outskirts of the market. Now they have to take a more traditional route.”
Show the traditional truck market
Not more recently than on April 9, Tesla’s website included renderings of the truck in an atmosphere and a copy of announcements in the form of March which were “built for any planet” with a “cabin as silent as space”. (The brand takes away traditional advertising and is based on Musk, the website, its reputation and its X presence to sell vehicles.)
At the beginning, Ford CEO Jim Farley rejected the Cybertruck as only for “Silicon Valley People” and “as a high -end fresh product parked in front of a hotel”.
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“I don’t make trucks like that,” said Farley shortly before the release of Cybertruck. “I make trucks for real people who do real jobs, and it’s another type of truck.”
In mid-April, Tesla redesigned her product page for the first time since the release of the truck. No more aesthetics and futuristic allusions in Mars; Now the vehicle is able to a construction worker or a family outing.
It has been surprisingly similar to advertisements for the Ford F-1524 model 2024, the best-selling pick-up in the United States for 40 years.
Tesla’s new Cybertruck page resembles certain F-150 advertisements. Tesla and Ford
The main image of the web pages of the truck included Airstream trailers, and both included images of truck beds filled with wire.
Tesla and Ford did not respond to a request for comments.
The cheaper version and scale of the Tesla truck, launched in April, is also similar in terms of price, range and towing capacity to Ford electric F-150.
Two Tesla sales workers told Business Insider that they had seen pressure to market the vehicle more to the typical truck buyer since the end of last year. The sales worker who works in a southern state said that the flashy exterior of the truck had made the search for people ready to buy it difficult.
“Most test drivers are not real truck buyers,” they said. “It’s more a novelty.”
Cybertruck’s updated website focuses on the functionality of the truck. Ford and Tesla
Despite the exterior “Balle test” of the truck, Tesla struggled to market it as a work site and sustainable from the start. A few weeks following his release, the owners and the criticisms went to social networks to publish Cybertruck failures, including images of the truck stuck in the snow or difficult to raise a hill. The phenomenon even generated a popular Reddit channel with more than 300,000 members called “Cyberstuck”. The pick-up has also had eight reminders since its release.
Even if a typical truck owner may not work on a farm or construction site, it is useful to sell this image. DRURY considers new marketing equipment as a step in the right direction.
“They must announce sustainability. It must be used and mistreated, and all the capacities that make it a work truck must be fully exposed,” said Drury. “People might not use it for these capacities, but it’s about selling an image or a lifestyle.”
Musk pivot
Tesla’s Cybertrucck redesign coincided with the political change to the right of Musk.
Traditionally, Teslas called buyers on the left; Many business sales centers are located in blue states and urban areas, and Democrats have been more likely to buy an EV.
But as Musk has become more and more linked to President Donald Trump and Doge, some of these people began to light Tesla, organizing demonstrations outside the sales centers. Other people have vandalized cybertrucks and targeted their owners.
Tesla’s sales figures have followed suit, especially for Cybertruck. The company sold 6,406 cybertrucks in the first three months of 2025, or about half of the number it sold the previous quarter, according to an estimate of COX Automotive.
In addition to the arguments of the secretary to Trump and the trade Howard Lutnick, the marketing of “the working man” could well appeal to another type of client. (Pressing a broader cultural push towards traditional masculinity, which Musk has defended, does not hurt either.)
At least one analyst sees a potential boon in the red state. “Tesla could actually make significant sales gains over time” in the Red counties, wrote Itay Michaeli, a TD Cowen analyst in March.
Aside from the policy, the editor -in -chief of Auto Trader, Brian Moody, told Business Insider that he thought that Cybertruck’s marketing strategy had been an intelligent decision for the brand and represents natural progression.
“As soon as the door came out, they called on Tesla fans, but most of these people have probably already bought the car, and now they have to call on ordinary people,” said Moody. “Now they have to focus on practicality.”
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