Cybertruck, Ford and GM EV pickups: Dug graves and unrealistic expectations

Add Tesla (TSLA) to the list of automakers pumping the brakes on the prospects of electric pickup trucks.

“We dug our own grave with Cybertruck,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s Q3 earnings call on Wednesday night. “Special products that come along once in a long while are just incredibly difficult to bring to market, to reach volume, to be prosperous. It's fundamental to the nature of the newness.”

Despite the company finally revealing a November 30 delivery date for the Cybertruck, for at least a few select customers, Musk warned of “enormous challenges” in ramping up Cybertruck production and that volume production of 250,000 units would not be reached until 2025.

While Tesla and Musk are confident in the Cybertruck demand story, it seems that hasn’t been the case for other EV pickups that are currently on the market.

‘Evolving EV demand’

Take Ford’s (F) F-150 Lightning electric pickup.

The Lightning has been well-received as a product, though not without some challenges, including a battery defect that affected production earlier this year and other teething pains. While the truck sold well following its release last year, recently sales have been challenged. Ford reported in Q3 that Lightning sales fell 46% year over year to 3,503 vehicles sold.

This subsequently led to Ford temporarily cutting a shift at its F-150 Lightning electric pickup plant in Detroit. Though Ford didn’t indicate demand was a problem, the Wall Street Journal reported a United Auto Workers (UAW) official connected with the Lightning’s Rouge assembly plant claiming that “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that our sales for the Lightning have tanked.”

Cost may be the biggest issue for Ford at the moment. “Consumers might be hesitant to pay 24% more for an EV pickup [versus a gas-powered truck] which could be causing [automakers] to rethink their EV pickup strategy until they can make them more cost competitive,” online car shopping site CarGurus CEO Kevin Roberts said to Yahoo Finance. Roberts notes the average new listing price on CarGurus (CARG) at the end of September for a F-150 Lightning was nearly $76,000, while a regular gas-powered F-150 was around $61,000.

Ford’s crosstown rival GM (GM) has also been hearing the rumblings of demand drying for EV pickups. GM said it will delay the conversion of its Orion Assembly plant in Michigan, which was supposed to be repurposed for the production of the Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV pickups, and will push production to late 2025 in order to “better manage capital investment while aligning with evolving EV demand.”

“Evolving EV demand” is the key phrase here, as GM just started deliveries of its Silverado EV work truck for commercial customers.

“Brands like Chevrolet, Ford, and GMC made assumptions about what percentage of their future truck sales would be electric trucks. It’s clear those assumptions were unrealistic based on the current and near-term future demand for these models,” iSeeCars analyst and longtime industry watcher Karl Brauer said to Yahoo Finance.