Tesla Cybertruck Sales More Than Doubled In Q3, Became 3rd Best Selling EV In USA

The Tesla Cybertruck is anything but normal. However, the sci-fi electric truck is following the trend of other Tesla models and shooting up the sales chart. Naturally, ramping up gradually, it is nowhere close to the top selling Tesla Model Y (86,801 deliveries in the 3rd quarter) or the Tesla Model 3 (58,423 deliveries), but it has risen to become the 3rd best selling electric vehicle in the United States (16,692 deliveries), according to Kelley Blue Book.

That 16,692 delivery total more than doubled the number of Cybertrucks on the road, bringing the year-to-date total to 28,250. (Another 190 trucks were delivered in the 4th quarter of 2022.)

Extrapolating 16,692 out to a full year, that would be almost 67,000 Cybertrucks a year, less than half of what Elon Musk once set as his expectation for the electric truck (150,000 sales a year). I don’t think we’re close to production ramping up to its max, but I did just receive an invitation from Tesla to complete my lower-cost Cybertruck order (I have a reservation still that I am now not expecting to use).

If you go to the Tesla Cybertruck order page directly, it still shows the $99,990 Cybertruck as the lowest cost Cybertruck. So, this invite above is indeed just for reservation holders.

However, if they are already getting to reservations for the lower-cost Cybertruck trim, it makes me think Tesla has already burned through a good chunk of its reservations. But we’ll see.

Compared to other electric trucks, the Cybertruck is rocking it. In contrast to Tesla’s 16,692 deliveries of the Cybertruck, the Ford F-150 Lightning had only 7,162 deliveries in the 3rd quarter and the Chevrolet Silverado EV had a mere 1,995 deliveries. The Rivian R1T had only 3,817 deliveries.

Behind the Cybertruck, the next best selling electric vehicle in the United States last quarter was the Ford Mustang Mach-E, with 13,392 deliveries. And the 5th best selling — and here’s the shocker — was the Honda Prologue. Who would’ve thunk it?

Overall, with 166,923 deliveries, Tesla accounted for 48% of the USA’s 346,309 BEV sales in the 2nd quarter. It’s a huge chunk of the US total, but, as I noted a couple of weeks ago, the brand just dropped below 50% of the US BEV market in the 2nd quarter for the first time since … seemingly forever.

By the way, while Tesla sales were flying, its arch nemeses from a decade or so ago — hydrogen fuel cell cars — were languishing as little more than a footnote. Just 73 Toyota Mirai and 26 Hyundai Nexo fuel cell electric vehicles were sold in the 3rd quarter in the United States. The only thing that shocks me is that there are still somehow 100 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles being sold in the country.

Ford was the 2nd best selling brand for EVs in Q3 2024 (23,509 deliveries) and Chevrolet was 3rd (19,933 deliveries). The numbers are getting larger, just not nearly as much as we all need.