The Cybertruck, Tesla’s would-be competitor in the EV pickup truck market, has long since secured its place as the Edsel of the electric vehicle age.

It’s been derided as unwieldy and ugly and unable to match other pickups in basic functionality. In the colorful take of Tesla critic Will Lockett, it’s “the vehicular form of halitosis” and an “ick’ on four wheels.”

But one doesn’t need words to describe how the Cybertruck has fared among the pickup-buying public; the numbers tell the story.

According to Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book, Tesla sold only 20,237 of the vehicles in 2025, down 48.1% from the 38,965 sold the year before. The slide continued in the first quarter of this year, Cox reported — 3,519 sold, down 45.1% from the 6,406 sold in the year-earlier period.

But there’s more to the story — or to be more precise, less.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, of the 7,071 Cybertruck U.S. registrations, 1,279 went to SpaceX, the rocketship company headed by Tesla boss Elon Musk, which is planning an initial public stock offering sometime this year. An additional 60 were registered by other companies in the Musk empire, namely xAI, Neuralink and the Boring Co.

In other words, nearly 20% of all the Cybertrucks registered in the U.S. in the fourth quarter went to Musk’s companies. Based on the Cybertruck’s starting price of $70,000, that’s the equivalent of $93.7 million in merchandise circulating within Musk’s orbit rather than going to outside buyers.

The figures were compiled by S&P Global Mobility and reported by Bloomberg. I asked Tesla to comment but received no reply.

The transfers of Cybertrucks to other Musk companies raise questions about how he conflates the interests of his private companies and his public company (Tesla), arguably to the disadvantage of Tesla shareholders. More on that in a moment.

The sales numbers raise obvious questions about the future of the Cybertruck as part of Tesla’s five-model lineup. They also undermine Musk’s declared faith in the truck. When it was introduced in 2023, Musk asserted that he expected to sell 250,000 to 500,000 Cybertrucks a year once manufacturing capacity was fully engaged.

It would be hard to find market experts who took that prediction seriously, but few probably expected the shortfall to be so steep. Cybertruck’s 48.1% decline in 2025 sales compared with 2024 was the sharpest such decline of any EV in the U.S. market over that period, in which EV sales generally slumped.

Initial Cybertruck sales of 38,965 in 2024 seemed almost to validate Musk’s optimism. But negative perceptions took hold through the year and into 2025, starting with the ridicule the vehicle’s boxy design attracted on the street.

Poor manufacturing quality has prompted U.S. regulators to order eight recalls of Cybertrucks since its introduction, culminating in the March 2025 recall of almost every Cybertruck to correct the tendency of a stainless steel exterior panel to come off the vehicle at freeway speeds, posing a hazard to other drivers.

Online reports and videos showing Cybertrucks defeated by conditions such as uneven terrain and steep grades that are routinely managed by rival pickups may also have sapped buyer enthusiasm for the model.

It’s true that the Cybertruck has problems that aren’t shared with other EVs. One is that it can’t be sold in European Union countries, because the EU has found that its exterior design can imperil pedestrians.

Nor do other EV manufacturers have to contend with public obloquy being showered on their leaders; Tesla sales in Germany cratered last year after Musk threw his support behind the extreme-right neo-Nazi party Alternative for Germany. There, new Tesla vehicle registrations fell by 76.3% in February 2025 from the same month a year earlier — that is, to 1,429 from 6,029. The decline continued all year, resulting in an overall decline of 48.4%.

As my colleague Caroline Petrow-Cohen reported last year, public distemper over Musk’s position as the leader of DOGE, the quasi-governmental body that ran roughshod through the federal workforce after Donald Trump launched his second term, also may have cut into Tesla sales in the U.S. A study by Yale researchers last year estimated that Musk cost Tesla as many as 1.26 million car sales since October 2022, when he acquired the social media platform Twitter and gave greater access on it to the far right and other extremist voices.

That said, Teslas remained the best-selling EVs in the U.S. market last year with nearly 60% of EV unit sales, according to Cox. Its full-year decline of 7% was exceeded by several other carmakers with EVs in their lineups, including BMW (down 16.7%), Kia (down 39.7%) and Ford (down 14.1%).

The U.S. EV market generally lost ground after the expiration of federal incentives last year, but many individual models slumped sharply, including Ford’s all-electric version of its top-selling F-150 pickup, sales of which fell 18.5% from the year before (though it still outsold the Cybertruck).

Tesla’s transfers of Cybertrucks to other Musk operations should concern Tesla shareholders, depending on how much, if anything, SpaceX and the other companies paid for the vehicles. In arm’s-length transactions between related parties, the transfers should be marked at prices resembling those on the open market, whether individual or fleet sales.

Tesla has been vague to the point of opacity about these deals. In an amendment to its annual report filed on April 30 (after the Bloomberg report), it disclosed that it received about $143.3 million last year and $100,000 this year in deals with SpaceX, including “the sale of vehicles” at what may be market prices. But it didn’t say those deals involved the Cybertruck.

It would be interesting to know how SpaceX is using its Cybertrucks, since it wouldn’t seem to need a fleet to transport equipment headed for space in the back of pickup trucks. Why Musk’s AI or neurological companies need any such vehicles is hard to gauge.

As it happens, however, Tesla investors don’t seem to have been fazed by Bloomberg’s report. Tesla shares closed in Monday’s trading at $392.51, higher than they were on April 15, the day before Bloomberg published, when they closed at $391.95.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Musk has melded his personal interests with those of his public shareholders. The prototypical such action occurred in 2016, when he orchestrated Tesla’s purchase of his SolarCity for $2.8 billion, a 35% premium from the latter’s trading price. (Investment manager Jim Chanos, who had short positions in both companies, called the deal a “shameful example of corporate governance at its worst.”)

At the time, Tesla’s seven board seats were held by Musk and four of his cronies, including his brother Kimbal, and SolarCity’s board included Musk and two of his cousins. On that occasion, Tesla investors turned queasy, pushing Tesla shares down by more than 10% the day the deal was announced.

Musk defended the deal as a triumph of clean energy industry synergy, but one struggles to find significant gains from the linkup. Energy generation and storage, which would cover SolarCity’s business, accounted for about 13.5% of Tesla’s revenue in 2025, nearly a decade after the merger.

What role the Cybertruck — indeed, any Tesla vehicles — will play in the company’s future remains murky. Musk recently has talked about shifting the company’s focus to AI, robotaxis and humanoid robots, but these all resemble pipe dreams. AI is more and more a marketing term with less meat on its bones than the incessant publicity about it suggests and Tesla’s robotaxi venture today consists of about a dozen vehicles tooling around Austin, Texas, with human supervisors in the car or near at hand.

Musk last year projected that humanoid robots would generate “$30 trillion in revenue” for Tesla, though he acknowledged that he was “just guessing” and that there would be a “long way to go between here and making one billion robots a year.” As I’ve reported, however, even some robotics experts argue that giving workaday robots humanoid features makes no sense functionally and is likely to be abandoned once manufacturers seriously contemplate how household robots should look and function.

None of this means that Tesla might not be able to recapture its mojo in the EV market. Consumer interest in EVs tends to rise and fall in lockstep with gas prices. EV makers had a tough 2025 in the U.S. But that could turn around this year if President Trump’s Iran adventure continues to drive up the cost of oil and consequently gasoline prices at the pump.

But Tesla faces a lot more competition for EVs than it ever has in the past; other companies such as Hyundai have moved down-market and China’s BYD recently surpassed Tesla in global sales of battery-powered vehicles. BYD has been largely kept out of the U.S. market by high tariffs, but it may be impossible to keep its cars out forever. Tesla, which pioneered the EV market, may need a new model to compete with BYD and the foreign and domestic automakers already in the market, but the Cybertruck sure hasn’t been looking like its savior.

California regulators may seek to suspend State Farm’s license for up to a year and levy millions in penalties against the insurer, alleging it mishandled January 2025 wildfire claims in Los Angeles County.

In an extraordinary step, the Department of Insurance announced Monday that it filed an administrative action against the state’s largest home insurer after an investigation into 220 sample claims found 398 violations of state law in about half of them.

“Our investigation found that State Farm delayed, underpaid, and buried policyholders in red tape at the worst moment of their lives,” Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said in a statement. “That is unacceptable, and we are taking decisive action to hold them accountable.”

The department is seeking a cease-and-desist order to stop the insurer from engaging in unfair or deceptive practices — and to possibly suspend State Farm’s “certificate of authority” for up to a year, meaning it could not write policies during that period, department spokesperson Michael Soller said.

While the terms of the proposed suspension aren’t clear, the move could prevent the insurer — which covers more than 1 million homes — from issuing new policies at a time when the state is facing an insurance crisis.

The case will be heard by a state administrative law judge, who will provide a recommendation to Lara on a possible monetary penalty and whether to carry out the license suspension. State regulators declined to comment on the action or how it might affect policyholders.

State Farm on Monday rejected the department’s claims that it engaged in a “general practice of mishandling or intentionally underpaying wildfire claims” and said it will further respond through the legal process.

“California’s homeowners insurance market is the most dysfunctional in the country,” State Farm said in a statement. “The California Department of Insurance should take responsibility for regulatory delays and uncertainty that have contributed to fewer choices and higher costs for consumers.”

State Farm said it has paid more than $5.7 billion and handled more than 11,700 residential and auto claims. That is nearly one-third of those filed after the Jan. 7, 2025, fires that damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.

The department in June 2025 launched a “market conduct exam” into State Farm General — the subsidiary of the giant Bloomington, Ill., insurer that handles California home insurance — after complaints by victims of the fires in Pacific Palisades, Altadena and nearby communities.

The Times reported that within two months of the fires homeowners were getting frustrated with the insurer over its handling of smoke damage claims. They contended that State Farm was resisting hygienic testing for toxic chemicals and was trying to minimize cleanup costs, which the company denied.

Later, anger was directed at Lara, with fire victims saying he wasn’t cracking down on State Farm. More than a dozen homeowners told The Times this year that the department did little to resolve a wide range of complaints they filed against State Farm.

Los Angeles County also has an ongoing investigation into the insurer.

Nevertheless, the threat to suspend State Farm’s license because of the alleged violations was met with skepticism. The company has a roughly 20% market share. It’s unclear where its policyholders could find coverage.

State Farm’s decision to not renew some 72,000 residential policies in March 2024 because of its losses after a series of wildfires sparked fears that California’s home insurance market could be on the brink of collapse.

“Given how the department has bent over backward to prevent State Farm from carrying out its threats to leave the state due to its alleged financial problems, it’s hard to believe,” said Carmen Balber, executive director of Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.

Soller said the terms of a possible suspension — including whether it would apply only to new policies or existing policyholders — would be set after the hearing.

“Any order must define the terms of a suspension based on the evidence at a hearing. We cannot predict what an order after a hearing on the evidence will be,” he said.

The results of the market conduct exam were released Monday in support of the legal action.

It found that the company failed in numerous cases to pursue a “thorough, fair and objective investigation” into claims, failed to come to “prompt, fair, and equitable settlements” and made settlement offers that were “unreasonably low.”

Other alleged violations included a failure to give timely responses to claims, provide a factual or legal basis for claim denials and give victims a primary point of contact after assigning three or more adjusters in a six-month period.

The legal filing also faults the company’s handling of smoke damage claims, including denials of payments for hygienic testing.

The company denied it was at fault in some cases and admitted it was at fault in others, often saying that the problem was due to issues with specific adjusters, and that it held meetings with adjusters after hearing about the alleged violations.

State Farm said Monday that the “additional payments tied to the issues identified in the Market Conduct Examination were about $40,000 in the context of more than $5.7 billion paid.”

The alleged violations each carry a fine of up to $5,000 in general and up to $10,000 if they are found to be willful.

The department said the alleged violations could bring penalties of $2 million or more. Soller said regulators also want State Farm to make policyholders whole, but does not have authority to order restitution

Soller noted that is why the department is sponsoring a bill by state Senate Insurance Committee Chair Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) that would require insurers to pay restitution directly to policyholders.

State Farm released a statement April 22 that outlined five “commitments” to policyholders.

They included providing single points of contact and improved communication so there are “fewer handoffs, fewer repeated explanations, and seamless support.”

Fire victims have long called for a crackdown on the insurer and to bar a rate increase State Farm was seeking until it resolved their complaints. They also called for Lara’s resignation, claiming he was not enforcing the law, while he contended the market conduct exam needed to take its course.

The company was ultimately granted a 17% rate hike in March after a three-way agreement that also involved Consumer Watchdog, which had intervened in the matter as allowed under state law.

Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group that led the calls to stop the rate hike and for Lara’s resignation, said the insurer must make harmed policyholders whole.

“We call on the department to act on every outstanding complaint, and report transparently on outcomes. State Farm’s parent sits on $240 billion in assets. They have the money to fulfill their obligations to L.A. fire survivors,” Chen said.

Possible sanctions against State Farm are a “positive development” but mean little in practice for Pacific Palisades property owner John Hurley, who continues to fight the insurer to mediate asbestos and heavy metal contamination from the fire nearly 16 months ago.

He said State Farm stopped reimbursing him for lost rent on the unrepaired house. Hurley has filed at least half a dozen complaints with the state insurance department, to little avail.

“I unfortunately feel the insurance companies and the state are somewhat allies,” Hurley said. Even if the state agency were to prevail in sanctions against State Farm, “who gets the money? The state … or the insured?”

Times staff writer Paige St. John contributed to this report.