Cybertruck may be entering automotive history as the most expensive failed model ever.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Sales of new vehicles in June fell 4.2% year-over-year, to 1.25 million vehicles, after the best March (1.59 million) since 2021, a strong April (1.46 million), and a middling May (1.46 million). But June had only 24 selling days, compared to 26 in June 2024.
The seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales, which accounts for the number of selling days, was up year-over-year by 2.3%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis today. But month-to-month, the sales rate fell for the third month in a row. At 15.3 million new vehicles, it was way down from March (17.8 million) and from April (17.3 million). Those two months had been powered by a very good tax-refund season – they make great down-payments – and by some folks’ efforts to front-run any tariffs. Those two factors had pulled sales forward. Both of these factors subsided in May and June.
And the rate of sales being up year-over-year by 2.3% in June is at least in part due to the CDK hack which had dragged down sales in June 2024 as the 15,000 dealers on CDK’s cloud-based dealership management system could no longer access it to do even the most basic things, such as processing their deals. With more normal sales in June 2024, there might not have been a year-over-year gain at all. Note the spikes in March and April.
Quarterly sales, not seasonally adjusted. In quarterly terms – which is how GM and many other automakers report auto sales – new vehicle sales rose 3.0% year-over-year, to 4.18 million vehicles, the best performance for Q2 since 2021, despite the middling June:
Stellantis, Nissan & Tesla drag down Q2 sales.
Among the 8 big automakers here, 5 booked strong year-over-year sales gains in Q2. GM’s EV sales doubled, which put it in the #2 spot. The other 3 automakers booked steep sales declines.
#1 General Motors, Q2 sales: +7.3% year-over-year, 746,588 vehicles, all brands combined.
EV Sales soared by 100% year-over-year, and by 30% quarter-over-quarter to 41,312 EVs. GM, which now has a full lineup of EV models, became the second-largest EV seller in the US behind Tesla.
EVs do not include hybrids and plug-in hybrids (they’re vehicles with an internal combustion engine and are therefore ICE vehicles).
#2 Toyota, Q2 sales: +7.2% year-over-year, 666,470 vehicles, Toyota and Lexus brands combined.
After having pooh-poohed EVs for years, Toyota now has only one EV on the market, the bZ4X which it jointly developed with Subaru, and which it sells in small numbers (3,639 in Q2). But it is now investing large amounts in creating EV platforms and models.
#3 Ford, Q2 sales: +14.2% year-over-year, to 612,095 vehicles, Ford and Lincoln brands combined.
EV sales plunged 31% year-over-year to 16,438. Years ago, Ford had made a series of massively bad decisions, including: One, aiming for the high end when it came out with the Mach-E and Lightning, and so its costs are too high in those vehicles, but it cannot sell them at formerly envisioned fantasy prices, and so it’s losing a lot of money on them; and two, building the Mach-E in Mexico (13% US-content) and putting overwhelming foreign content into its USA-assembled Lightning (only 29% US content), which exposes these vehicles to tariffs a lot more than its competitors’ vehicles. So Ford is backpaddling on its EV strategy for now until it can get its ducks lined up in a row, which may be never, the way it’s going.
#4 Hyundai-Kia Q2 sales: +7.6% year-over-year, to 453,387 vehicles, a record second quarter. Hyundai’s sales +9.8% year-over-year; Kia +5.2% year-over-year.
#5 Honda Q2 sales: +8.7% year-over-year, to 387,574 vehicles, Honda and Accura brands combined.
Honda still doesn’t make EVs, but is working on them. It is selling EVs made by GM based on the Chevy Blazer, and sells them as the Honda Prologue and the Acura ZDX. Combined sales jumped by 280% year-over-year in June, but it has dialed back its deal with GM because the vehicles are made in Mexico (by GM) and the cost structure of the deal is too high for Honda.
#6 Stellantis Q2 sales: -10% year-over-year, all brands combined, to 309,976. The death spiral continues. Jeep and Ram have possibly caught themselves, but the rest is in free-fall. Total sales are down by over 40% from the peak in 2015.
- Jeep sales: +1% to 148,832
- Ram pickup truck sales: +5% to 110,616
- Chrysler sales: -42%, to just 23,175 (only selling minivans).
- Dodge sales: -48% to 25,747
- Fiat and Alfa Romeo sales are near-nothing and combined are down close to 50% year-over-year.
#7 Nissan Q2 sales: -6.5% year-over-year, to 221,441 vehicles, Nissan and Infiniti combined. Total sales are down roughly 40% from the peak in 2017.
Tesla only discloses global sales, not US sales. In Q2, Tesla’s global sales plunged by 13.5% year-over-year, a slight downward acceleration from the Q1 drop of 13.0% (red line).
Model 3 and Model Y sales combined dropped by 11.5% year-over-year, an improvement over the Q1 drop of 12.4%, to 373,728 vehicles (blue line).
But the stunning thing is the plunge in sales of “Other Models,” which are the Cybertruck and the Models X and S. Sales plunged by 51.8% year-over-year, and they dropped even on a quarter-to-quarter basis, to just 10,394 vehicles (green line).
In Q2 2023, before the Cybertruck was produced and when “Other Models” were just the Models X and S, Tesla sold nearly twice as many Other Models as it did in Q2 2025 when they included the Cybertruck. This is a really bad sign that indicates that the Cybertruck may be entering automotive history as the most expensive failed model ever.
Here is a close-up of the Cybertruck debacle.
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