It’s taken less than a year for the Tesla Cybertruck to make it to the top of a mountain.
The EV maker’s much-hyped (and much-maligned) pickup is now the highest-selling electric truck in the U.S., according to Road and Track. Registration data shows that the Cybertruck’s days as a novelty might be over after it outsold every other one of its peers for the month of May.
Ever the rebel, Tesla doesn’t release individual model sales numbers. But an analysis of market data by S&P Global shows that the Cybertruck is proving to be quite popular a little over a half year after production began in earnest. The financial information firm found that 3,907 examples of the pickup were registered across the country in May.
That makes the latest Tesla the best-selling electric truck … by a lot. In second place was the Ford F-150 Lightning, which managed 2,353 registrations over the month, followed in third by the Rivian R1T, which had 1,237 registrations. General Motors two battery-powered pickups, the Chevrolet Silverado EV (668 registrations) and the Hummer EV (337 registrations), rounded out the list.
The Cybertruck may have won the month of May, but it still has plenty of ground to make up on the F-150 Lightning. The Blue Oval’s pickup is the best-selling battery-powered truck through the first five months of the year, with 13,443 registrations. Over the same period, 7,879 Cybertrucks have been registered. Only 3,881 R1Ts have been registered this year, which is less than the number of Cybertrucks that were sold in May.
Ford’s lead may not hold up for too much longer, though. Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has called the Cybertruck the “coolest car” he’s ever seen, revealed that the company is now building 1,300 examples of the pickup per week. If that number holds steady, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see it overtake the F-150 Lightning before the end of the year.
News of the Cybertruck’s success couldn’t have come at a better time for Tesla. Earlier this month, it came out that the company’s share of the U.S. EV market had fallen below 50 percent for the first time. The pickup may not be everything it was promised to be, but that might not matter as far as sales are concerned.
