It is astonishing how shoddy is the construction of Elon Musk’s Tesla Cybertruck, with parts of the body falling off especially at higher speeds, because they had been pasted on with glue and the adhesive failed after some time, especially in colder weather.
That is not the only part that is falling off. The A-shaped piece of trim along the top at the two sides over the window also has been falling off for the same reason.This is dangerous for other users of the road, since flying metal parts can cause serious injury and damage. How long before Tesla gets sued?
Tesla has stopped all Cybertruck deliveries but isn’t saying it’s because of the glue used on the Cybertruck. Tesla is only saying Cybertrucks are on a “containment hold,” which is a vague designation by design. A containment hold is a proactive stopgap used by auto manufacturers to address quality issues or defects on vehicles before they reach customers. This is a serious measure that indicates significant problems with the vehicle’s construction. Automakers don’t have to explain why a vehicle or vehicles are in a containment hold, and companies aren’t limited to the time they can be in containment holds, either. For now, Tesla is simply keeping Cybertrucks away from dealerships without acknowledging any issues.
Now, the automaker has issued another recall, the eighth one since the truck was released, involving over 46,000 Cybertrucks produced between November 13, 2023, and February 27, 2025. The NHSTA notes that the warning is for the aforementioned cant panel separation and that fixing it will require extra reinforcements and an adhesive that is not susceptible to “environmental embrittlement.”
Given how expensive this monstrosity is, you would think that a little more care would have been taken.
A brand-new Cybertruck is still very, very expensive: leasing starts at around $900 a month, while someone interested in buying an all-wheel drive base model would be expected to drop at least $90,000.
But reports indicate that sales, after starting out strong, are now slumping.
Musk claimed that over 1 million people reserved a Cybertruck, and so far, that has not resulted in 1 million Cybertrucks on the road. To be sure, it’s still early days for the angular EV, and it could still prove to be a success. But Tesla lowered the deposit reservation to $100, after initially asking for $1,000, which likely boosted reservations among people who probably weren’t going to end up buying one.
And then there was the rocky rollout: the viral videos of a Cybertruck getting stuck in snow or sand; the numerous recalls (seven since its launch in December 2023), including one related to a faulty accelerator pedal; and Musk’s emergence as a stalwart supporter of Donald Trump and a purveyor of racist, rightwing conspiracies.
…[A]s the year went on, evidence emerged that the Cybertruck may have already passed its peak. There were anecdotal reports of Cybertrucks piling up on used car lots. Tesla Cybertruck factory workers in Austin were told to stay home for three days in December.
…“What’s going on with used Cybertrucks and we can see the number of days those vehicles have been sitting on lots has been going up,” Roberts says. “And the average price of used Cybertrucks has been trending down.”
Meanwhile, sales of its Chinese competitor BYD are soaring, especially after it announced that. they were able to drastically reduce the charging time.
The leading Chinese electric carmaker BYD has soared in value after it said its latest batteries charge fast enough to 249 miles of range in only five minutes.
BYD’s Hong Kong-listed shares gained 4.1 percent on Tuesday to hit a record high of 408.80 Hong Kong dollars (US $40.58), as investors bet that the company could strengthen its already commanding market position.
The Chinese company is already the world’s biggest manufacturer of battery electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars that combine a battery and a polluting petrol engine. Investors including Warren Buffett have bet that the company can extend its lead in electric car production—and the sale of batteries to rival carmakers.
…The chargers need to deliver ultra-high voltage and ultra-large current at the same time. But big currents, in particular, cause problems for batteries because they tend to generate damaging heat. BYD said it had managed to reduce the internal resistance of the new battery, allowing the highest charging speeds for any production vehicle.
To handle the high voltages, BYD also had to produce a new generation of silicon carbide power chips, it said.
BYD also said it would install a network of 4,000 “flash-charging stations” across China to allow for the fast charging.
As complaints about Musk and the cybertruck increase, people are protesting at its stores around the world.
Thousands of people worldwide protested Elon Musk and his efforts with Donald Trump to dismantle the US federal government on Saturday, with rallies held in front of nearly every Tesla showroom in the US and many around the world – a concerted effort to go after the billionaire’s deep pockets as the CEO of the electric vehicle maker.
Protest organizers asked people to do three things: don’t buy a Tesla, sell off Tesla stock and join the “Tesla Takedown” movement.
“Hurting Tesla is stopping Musk,” reads one of the group’s taglines. “Stopping Musk will help save lives and our democracy.”
On Saturday, with more than 200 events planned worldwide, protests kicked off midday in front of Tesla showrooms in Australia and New Zealand and then rippled across Europe in countries including Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK. Each rally was locally organized with original themes. In Ireland, it was “Smash the Fash”, and Switzerland had “Down with Doge”. Photos posted to Bluesky by Tesla Takedown showed demonstrators in San Jose, California, close to where Tesla was previously headquartered, and Austin, Texas, where its headquarters are now.
…
In San Francisco, a crowd of around 200 people gathered in front of the Tesla showroom. Protesters spilled into the busy street and onto the median, confusing the self-driving Waymos trying to get around people darting back and forth.
A boombox blasted We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister and cars drove by honking enthusiastically. Even passing postal trucks, public buses and fire engines honked in support. People propped up signs with slogans like “Burn your swastikar before it burns you” and “No Doge bags”. Others flew massive American flags mounted upside down.
The block-long Tesla showroom was emptied of all cars, and only a few security guards stood inside, with some San Francisco police outside.
…In Berkeley, California, the Tesla showroom has shut down every Saturday for the last month because of the weekly protests, according to salespeople from neighboring retailers. Only security guards have stayed on to guard the building. It’s been the scene of lively demonstrations that have included a mariachi band and a 10-foot cardboard Cybertruck for people to spray-paint. Earlier this month, the showroom’s front door was splattered with red paint. The showroom manager declined to comment.
Tesla stock price is dropping but Musk knows precisely whom to blame: the trans community of course.
Americans across the country have been showing their dissatisfaction with the unelected billionaire’s dismantling of the federal government by protesting at Tesla dealerships—including one last weekend in Palo Alto, the Silicon Valley city that Musk previously called home. While many of the protesters have been peaceful, there have been some instances of violence and vandalizing Tesla vehicles, including in both Las Vegas and Kansas City earlier this week, where unidentified people lit Teslas on fire, according to law enforcement.
…In the meantime, Musk appears to be doing his own investigation into the incidents at Tesla facilities—and by “investigation,” I mean boosting transphobia by blaming trans people for the events and reposting dubious data suggesting they are more violent than cisgender people.
…Unsurprisingly, Musk ran with the fact that some of the people charged with the Tesla vandalism may be gender non-conforming, suggesting that it pointed to a larger phenomenon of violence perpetrated by trans people. “What are the statistics on trans violence?” Musk asked in his repost of Insurrectionist Barbie’s post. Ever the dilettante, Musk quickly answered his own question—with more of the baseless transphobia he has long spewed on his platform. “The probability of a trans person being violent appears to be vastly higher than non-trans,” Musk falsely claimed. “Hormone injections cause extreme emotional volatility. That is simply a fact.”
Actually, it’s not. Here are some actual facts: Trans people are more than four times as likely as cis people to be victims of violent crime, according to research conducted by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The recent efforts of Musk and his right-wing cronies—including Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Libs of TikTok—to suggest that there’s an epidemic of violence being perpetrated by trans people are not new; the same assertions circulated after trans people were alleged to have been behind a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee in 2023 and a shooting at a Houston church last year—but there was no evidence to support those claims then, either, PolitiFact repeatedly reported. And while hormones naturally affect the emotions of trans and cis folks alike, gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy has been found to reduce depression and psychological distress.
…Trans rights advocates slammed Musk’s latest posts as disinformation designed to distract from his unpopularity and his suffering business interests
“Rather than cosplaying as a medical professional and spreading misinformation on the internet, perhaps Elon Musk should focus on his rapidly deteriorating business portfolio and the growing American rage at his hostile takeover of government,” Brandon Wolf, national press secretary at Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement provided to Mother Jones.
“Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in the world, but spends his days scapegoating a small, vulnerable community,” Caius Willingham, senior policy analyst at Advocates for Trans Equality, added. “That is because Musk wants Americans to be focused on the one percent of trans people instead of the one percent of the wealthiest people in the world so that he and his unelected cronies can profit from the dismantling of the U.S. Government.”
Despicable.
Thanks for pulling this story together.
If you want to keep tabs on the disaster that is the CyberTruck, head over to the CyberStuck subreddit to be informed and entertained. I’m embarrassed to say I visit several times a day.
Glue? Srsly? Is this an Airfix model or a car? X-D
I have mixed feelings about Tesla cars. The original models seem to be pretty high quality and performance, designed by skillful engineers and industrial designers. The truck is obviously designed by a nitwit with unearned self-confidence who believes himself to be a revolutionary.
I frequently drive past a Tesla dealership in our area, and they have as many as ten cybertrucks parked out front, all in a row. Some days they are moved to the side lot, sometimes staggered between other Tesla cars. It’s like they’re shuffling the lot to make it look more like they’re being sold, but I doubt it. Until they fix the “glue” problem, it should be illegal to allow any more on the road.
From what I’ve heard, the cybertruck was supposed to have an “exoskeleton” design (whatever that means in this context, I don’t feel like researching it) in order to basically make it able to take damage as well as a light tank. Unfortunately they couldn’t get their experimental designs down to a cost level which they could realistically profit from. And they already had a huge backlog of pre-orders and buyers getting antsy from the long wait, so after the first few dozen they just cheaped out and faked it.
A huge weapon in the right wing arsenal is to invent enemies (like trans people) and blame them for absolutely everything. It was the Jews who stabbed Germany in the back, thus losing The Great War. Those Jews! They are behind everything that goes wrong.
Today, it is ‘woke’, CRT, trans people, immigrants -- one or all or any combination may be blamed for whatever is happening that the oligarchs do not like. It is vile.
[I feel like I have posted this before, but it doesn’t look like I did. Maybe I’ve just been thinking it a lot.]
People say that Elon Musk never designed anything, but I think that is not true.
I think we can be very confident that Elon Musk did in fact design the Cybertruck.
And the reason we can be so confident is because no one with any knowledge of vehicle design would have designed the Cybertruck, so it must have been designed by someone in Tesla who had no knowledge of vehicles design, and yet could make his whimsical and nonsensical ideas be produced. Anyone with competence at Tesla would have wanted nothing to do with the Cybertruck, so everyone involved with its production must have been incompetent and unaware of it; case examples of Dunning-Kruger syndrome.
Tesla is reaping what Musk sowed.
From what I’ve heard, the cybertruck was supposed to have an “exoskeleton” design … in order to basically make it able to take damage as well as a light tank.
Which is a really stupid idea that tosses out the tried-and-true idea of “crumple zones” that absorb the energy of a collision so the flesh-people inside don’t have to. That “light tank” exoskeleton design makes passengers LESS safe, not more so. Just another brown gem from an idiot who thinks he’s a genius and therefore can disregard decades of innovation and experience ‘cuz previous generations can’t possibly know as much as a present-day self-proclaimed all-seeing-visionary genius, right?
@ 9
Yes Raging Bee is entirely correct normal cars are meant to crumple to some degree to reduce G forces -- same physics as airbags.
Oops. Borked the bolding. No doubt the trolls will be calling for my immediate banning.
[I fixed it -- Mano]
I disagree, and I think that’s unfair on the hundreds/thousands of people who were involved. If you’ve got a good job working at Tesla, and one day the boss comes in and says “build this”, you can either do as he says, or you can look for another job. I’m aware that a lot of people in the US change their job more often than they change their underwear, but for small-c conservative types like, oh, every single engineer I’ve ever met, if you like your job, you want to keep it.
I’m put in mind of the many, many clips of behind the scenes footage from “The Phantom Menace”, where George Lucas would be expounding on how great everything was going to be, and everyone else in the room was visibly nervous because they knew they were making an overblown firework display of a toy advert, but not a single one of them, up to and including Rick McCallum the producer, were in a position to say “no” to George. Of course, all George was doing was making a movie. Arguably one that shat on the most important cultural product of my childhood, but let’s be grown up -- just a movie. It feels like Elon is in that “can’t say no to him” position, but his products aren’t on screens, they’re out on roads, crashing and bursting into unquenchable flames and falling to pieces. It’s terrifying, and I’m only glad I live somewhere sensible enough to have made driving one on a road illegal.
Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer’s half-brother lets him design a car?
@13 Dunc:
exactly what came to my mind! Homer’s car design!!!!
… Elon Musk’s Tesla Cybertruck, with parts of the body falling off … another recall, the eighth one …
Which is why, at the local anti-DOGE demonstration here last Saturday (spiced up by the area Republicans having put out a call to defend their best ‘n’ brightest), I got a hearty laugh out of the sign held by one of the “We Love Elon!” chanters, which read: