That is not what it said. The statement had nothing to do with preference. It said 41% would avoid Teslas.
In English “avoid” and “prefer” do not mean the same thing.
They are still pumping the Cybertruck??? Really?
Oh boy.
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Of course! But you need to read my post more carefully!
41% avoid
59% would NOT avoid 
People who drive Cybertrucks love them.
GoogleAI:
Many owners genuinely love driving the Tesla Cybertruck for its unique style, performance, and advanced technology. [1, 2]
Why Owners Love the Cybertruck
- Futuristic Design: The sharp angles and stainless steel body make the truck stand out in a market full of standard SUV shapes.
- Handling and Steering: The steer-by-wire system changes how the wheels turn based on your speed, making a large truck feel nimble.
- Speed and Power: High-end models accelerate rapidly and offer heavy towing capacity (up to 11,000 pounds).
- Everyday Utility: Drivers praise the adjustable air suspension, roomy interior, and access to the reliable Tesla Supercharging network.
- Public Attention: Many owners enjoy the positive reactions, especially from children who get excited seeing the truck. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
The Captain
Okay, let me go back and read what you wrote…
Nope, you definitely said prefers. The next most avoided brand was BYD at 1%. Does that mean 99% of the buying public prefers BYD? Of course not. It means 99% of the buying public will consider BYD compared with only 59% who will consider Tesla.
There is no version of this story where 41% of EV owners avoiding Tesla is a good thing or is some kind of advantage for Tesla.
That’s good. How well are they selling? I asked Gemini:
After hitting a peak during its first full year on the market in 2024 (with roughly 39,000 units sold), sales nearly halved in 2025 to around 20,200 units. The downward trend has continued into 2026, with quarterly deliveries dropping to multi-year lows (such as roughly 3,500 units in Q1)
Sounds like the buying public is avoiding the Cybertruck Many Cybertrucks were sold to SpaceX, where they sit in parking lots depreciating.
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That future sounds amazing.
Here’s Waymo in the present.
Why are you dwelling on the past?
Tesla is about the future.
This does make me wonder why Tesla isn’t finally, at long last, considering a bit of advertising here. They invested a lot of money in developing the Cybertruck. It can’t be sustainable at these volumes. Yet there’s a lot of tech in the Cybertruck that isn’t immediately obvious to “normie” truck buyers who aren’t deeply invested in Tesla (literally and figuratively). If there’s one product in their lineup where some advertising about the product might actually drive some sales simply by increasing customer awareness of some of the features, it would be Cybertruck.
Yet they still don’t advertise for any of their cars. Other parts of the Musk Cinematic Universe have started advertising - I see Starlink ads all over the place. I wonder if maybe they’ll just pull off the bandaid with the automotive segment and realize that consumer-facing products might benefit from some positive ad spend.
Well, they have many announcements and demos and influencers.
And Cybercab is effectively a multi-billion dollar demonstration project - no real revenue.
Do we know Tesla’s spend on these things?
OK, I’ll make a confession! 
I pay attention to the source of news. I know which to trust and which to read with extreme caution. Way back when magazines were delivered by airmail and readers wrote letters to The Editor I had a subscription to Newsweek. I disagreed with one of their articles and wrote a Letter To The Editor which they promptly published. But there was a problem, they edited it slightly, enough to reverse its meaning, to say the opposite of what I meant. I have never trusted the press much after that.
Half way through this thread @mostlylong posted
Lambert’s article was option (re-launch predictions). @mostlylong’s post was about an opinion poll (More than 26,000 electric car owners in 30 countries were queried). No real world data anywhere, no market data, no sales numbers. nothing real, just opinions. And you expect me to treat it as gospel truth? It’s a bear slop!
“Bear slop” usually refers to a sticky, sweet commercial bait used by hunters to attract bears, or it describes fake, low-quality AI slop videos featuring bears on social media. [1, 2, 3]
What “Bear Slop” Means
- Hunting Attractant: Companies like Thunder Bay Feeds and Rack Stacker make thick, sweet liquids or gels—often flavored with molasses, black licorice, or barbecue—marketed as “bear slop” to bait and attract bears. [1, 2]
- AI Content: The term also describes the flood of viral, fake AI-generated videos showing polar bears or grizzly bears doing impossible, overly emotional, or silly things online. [1, 2, 3]
Bear-baiting? Why not have some fun?
The Captain
I would say that’s true for the rest of the lineup, not so much for Cybertruck. That’s a product that is well known by about everyone, and suffers from multiple adverse perceptions. The first is probably the look, it is so big and so different that it stands out among every other car/truck ever made. It’s polarizing, and not in a good way. (While that means some people love it, most don’t, and you’re not going to change that perception with advertising.)
Another is Musk himself, but let’s skip that one. The third is that its just not a great truck; the bed is too short to do full pickup duties, the range suffers with heavy loads, and the maintenance (surprisingly) is worse than a regular pickup. Things go bad, from panels falling off to windshield wipers burning out and more. It’s a “lifestyle” selection for a certain cohort, but it’s not going to move to a (much) wider base, even with better pricing or more advertising. It’s a mistake; too big for Joe Consumer, too new and different for Joe Contractor, too limited by range for Joe Hauler. But it’s hard to say “Oh that was a mistake, so Tesla will probably let it linger while they try to figure out what to do.
Where they could use some ad spend is on the other, more popular models, by demonstrating the usefulness of FSD, gas savings, and other features as are likely to move the stylish product. When you have a loser (generally speaking) it’s hard to make it a winner by forcing more people to look at it. It’s probably been done somewhere, but if so, it’s the outlier.
(I too have seen the Starlink ads all over the place, so clearly there isn’t a general prohibition against “paid advertising” per se.)
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What is the link between Starlink and Tesla EVs beyond Elon Musk?
Maybe Starlink has spare capacity while Tesla does not or Tesla wishes to pivot from selling passenger EVs to Robotaxis and Optimus Robots which they think are better sources of business?
Why the insistence to nail Tesla forever to passenger cars?
The Captain
That’s the link. Tesla’s refusal to use paid advertising stems from Musk’s long-standing dislike of advertising. He famously hates it. Tesla has occasionally dipped its toe into advertising, but has long maintained a very low advertising spend. Again, stemming from Musk’s disdain for advertising.
Starlink, though, is doing a really big spend. Or at least, it seems that way to me - I mostly see their ads during football games, which are typically not cheap for a nationwide campaign. That’s very unusual for a Musk-run joint.
Hence, my suggestion that if Musk is beginning to soften on paid advertising in principle, Tesla might want to consider it for their automotive division.
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Why does Elon Musk hate advertising?
GoogleAI:
Elon Musk dislikes traditional advertising because he views it as shallow, deceptive, and an unnecessary waste of money when a product’s intrinsic value and his own massive personal platform can drive attention for free. [1, 2]
Belief in Product Quality and Word-of-Mouth
- Substance over hype: Musk believes that if a product (like a Tesla or SpaceX rocket) is genuinely great, it does not need to be artificially sold through flashy commercial spots.
- The zero-ad history: For years, Tesla spent virtually nothing on traditional advertising, relying instead on word-of-mouth, product events, and direct digital engagement. [1, 2, 3]
The Power of His Personal Brand
- Free distribution: Musk uses his own social media presence as the main marketing engine for all his ventures—Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X.
- Direct line to consumers: By posting updates, answering questions, and generating constant media buzz directly to his millions of followers, he replaces the need for an expensive corporate ad department. [1]
A Clash Over Control and Free Speech
- Resentment of corporate leverage: His disdain for the industry turned confrontational after he bought X (formerly Twitter). When major brands paused their ad spending due to content moderation and brand-safety controversies, Musk accused them of trying to “blackmail” him with financial pressure and famously told them to “go fork yourself”.
- Ideological conflict: He views corporate advertisers as attempting to police or compromise his vision for an unfiltered platform. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
My father was in the hotel, restaurant, and catering business in Caracas. At some point he started advertising in the local newspapers. Once he became a local celebrity he stopped paid advertising. Instead he hosted reporters which only cost few meals and drinks and made sure to appear in photographs of events he catered. If a product sells itself, why waste money on ads?
Don’t you think Tesla is known well enough? Even Tesla bears keep Tesla in the news! Thanks!
The Captain
Not true! If you take liberties with what “over half of the buying public” means you may find a narrow market where this is true. The latest global stats I just reviewed shows Tesla has only 8% of the global market.
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Knowing that Tesla exists isn’t the same as knowing anything specific about their cars. Or managing what people know about Tesla, or how they feel about Tesla. Products like Coke and Apple and Toyota are certainly known well enough, but those companies still advertise like crazy. They want people to know what their latest offerings are, to develop or form positive brand associations, and to keep their products front-of-mind rather than something that consumers are passingly familiar with.
If the product isn’t selling itself enough - like the Cybertruck - then ad spending isn’t a waste. And even if the product sells itself (like iPhones), you spend money on ads so you can sell more.
You can coast on free media while the free media is coming (and while it’s positive). But if the free media dries up, or if it turns mixed or negative, or if you’re introducing a specific something that customers might not be aware of…well, then advertising is an essential tool.
You are a bit late to the thread, please read post 27
The Captain
Hershey’s chocolate started in 1900 or so. They ran their first advertisements in 1970. Don’t you think Hershey’s was well known enough?
While Ford ran a few ads prior to the Model T, he famously eschewed most advertising during its heyday because the product was so well known. Then Chevrolet (and GM) started taking market share, and he decided that the company needed to advertise (although he hated it.) Don’t you think Ford was well known enough?
Jeff Bezos once said “advertising is what you have to do when you have a mediocre product” (or words to that effect) and Amazon didn’t advertise in the beginning. Now they do, and frequently. Do you think Amazon isn’t well known enough?
Advertising is used to shape perceptions, not just sell “Big Sale this Friday!” A couple of notables: “Choosy Mothers Choose Jif” made women think they were doing something good by choosing a particular product. The Michelin “Because so much is riding on your tires” showing a baby floating on their tires vaulted the company to #1 worldwide by making people afraid of riding on “inferior” brands. There are hundreds of such examples, and Tesla, in the face of declining sales (in virtually every market) might want to reconsider, especially if they have either a dramatic Unique Selling Proposition like FSD or a compelling story against the conventional wisdom.
Or not. Musk hates advertising. Curious that it is being employed with such a large spend for Starlink. (I too have seen the spots in Sports, in Primetime, even in off-brand channels like 2nd & 3rd tier local broadcast TV subchannels.)
PS: Tesla has spare capacity. One of the reasons they took an entire line out of service and converted to Robotaxis when there was no demand for Robotaxis (nor hope of getting some what with regulatory issues) is that their demand had softened, and dramatically.
This is a bizarre situation in my opinion. What we know is they are producing them but, once produced, they just sit in parking lots in the early stages of rot that seems not materially different than seeing cars in a junk yard.
The apparent problem is that they must not be able to utilize them as Robotaxis as they have yet to prove readiness. The Austin rollout has been just a nationwide joke.
Here in Houston area, the robotaxi launch seems a farce too. The geofenced area is mostly a suburban soccer mom neighborhood. But it happens to have a Tesla showroom inside of its geofenced area. Very few Robotaxi rides have been utilized now in over 5 months and none have been in a cybercab. I think the average day has about 5-6 rides. Yet every new delivery of cyber cabs brought here to rot get hyped as if these new cars in storage are a ‘uuuge expansion of service. The cybercabs in this storage rot here greatly outnumber the Model Ys that are capable of rides.
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The oracle has spoken! 
The Captain
Sorry your opinion poll hardly is relevant when market share is the absurdly anemic 8%.
Evidently not, because the Cybercab isn’t selling itself. Elon Musk estimated it would sell between 250,000 and 500,000 units a year. It had deposits for 1.2 million units. Instead it is a sales disaster, selling only an estimated 3,500 units in Q1.
This is a bit of a problem. Cybertruck was a clean sheet design. And Tesla created some genuinely innovative technology for the vehicle that wasn’t used on other Tesla’s like 48 v architecture, 800 v powertrain, steer by wire, dynamic steering ratio, rear wheel steering, etc. The R&D costs had to be enormous.
And not just the R&D. The capex was enormous too. They built out assembly lines at GigaTexas that included the novel giga casting machines, new laser-cutting tooling for the cold-rolled stainless body, etc.
Tesla doesn’t break out capex by vehicle, but capex surged right around this time, and the depreciation is hitting the books now. But the anticipated revenues never arrived. In the business world, the technical term for this is “disaster.”
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I checked robotaxitracker.com for another thread, and it reported four Cybercabs in operation in the last three days, and only one of those four made more than two trips.
It is pretty clear their tech just isn’t up to the job yet. The Cybercab is shaping up to be a blunder perhaps greater than the Cybertruck.