Electric Truck Dreams Are Hitting Reality: Tesla Cybertruck, Rivian R1T, and Ford F-150 Lightning Struggle Into 2026

2025 has been a tricky year for fans of battery-electric pickup trucks. On the one hand, Q3 was generally pretty good for EVs overall. With the tax subsidies ending on September 30th, most manufacturers saw a big upswing in deliveries as buyers rushed to take advantage of the “free money.” On the other hand, did we just say that federal EV subsidies ended? The leaders in this segment are/were Rivian’s R1T, the first truck to break out, and perhaps the first to fail. The Ford F-150 Lightning, a fantastic truck, that truck buyers are just not in love with. And the Cybertruck, which owners love, and pretty much the rest of the known universe despises. Let’s break down where these three companies’ battery-electric pickups stand heading into 2026.

Ford F-150 Lightning - Out of Production
Ford has stopped producing the F-150 Lightning. Whether the line will resume or not is unclear. Ford says that it will bring the Lightning back at some point, but has not given any clear indication of when. Nothing says failed model like a pause in production. And this is not Ford’s pause for the Lightning to allow inventory to slowly drain from dealer lots.

Ford’s Lightning is a fantastic vehicle with specs to make your jaw drop. The problems for the model include its price, which is much more than the average price of a light-duty, full-size truck, and the simple fact that F-150 buyers are not really F-150 Lightning buyers. Yes, there is some overlap. It’s tiny. Another plus for Ford is that many municipalities and fleets will only buy American, and many default to Ford. We fear that if the fleet and municipality deliveries were pulled out of Ford’s overall sales numbers, it would be almost shocking how few Lightnings private owners have driven off lots.

Moving forward, Ford has already signaled a reboot to its battery-electric truck future, announcing a significantly smaller, but not small, all-new truck to come. We hope that the Lightning survives its sabbatical, and our best guess is that Ford is waiting until at least the end of Q1 to see what happens with EVs in America.

Rivian R1T - Declining Deliveries and a Closed Factory During a Critical Period
With the federal tax subsidies ending, and overall vehicle sales healthy in America, one would think that RIvian would be full-steam ahead with its R1T BEV pickup and banging them out like crazy. Sadly, at the end of Q3, Rivian’s R1T deliveries were down 32% year over year. Worse is the actual delivery number. Just 5,857 trucks sold in nine months. That averages to about 650 trucks per month. This is not a viable level of deliveries. Almost any vehicle with so few sales would be immediately canceled in America if it were not from a “start-up” hoping to gain its footing. How long can Rivian burn cash making almost no vehicles? Speaking of making now vehicles, Rivian also paused production of its EV truck recently. The very worst news may be significant layoffs at Rivian. The expected lifeline from VW? As of the last reporting, it's gone too. 

Tesla Cybertruck - Will It End Up a Musk-Owned-Company Work Vehicle?
What more can be written about the Tesla Cybertruck? Its delivery volume is so low that Tesla doesn’t even mention it in its delivery reports. Instead, it is lumped in with the other loser models from Tesla, S, X, Semi. Owners love their Cybertrucks, the problem is, there are not enough of them to justify its existence. The Cybetruck is Tesla’s “answer” to literally no question ever asked by shoppers. Just imagine if Tesla had instead designed, built, and marketed a smaller than Y crossover at a lower price point? We suspect Tesla would have had a third model success on its hands. Instead, the Cybertruck is a meme. The latest reporting is that Musk is directing his minions at the other companies he owns to buy up Cybertrucks, likely to reduce bloated inventory that is often reported as close to a billion dollars' worth of trucks.

Update - GM Idling Its EV Factory
According to Inside EVs, GM is idling its EV truck plant. GM has three models of EV trucks, and they are barely selling. The Silverado EV was up in deliveries through Q3, but still had a crazy-low run rate of about 1,100 units per month. That truck competes directly with the GMC and Hummer versions. Why did GM need three EV trucks?

Despite the writing on the wall, other brands are coming to market with EV trucks, or so they say. Slate plans to be the bottom feeder. The reporting on Slate has been laughable. The media pretended the truck would cost consumers around $20K to garner pageviews. Every expert in the industry knew otherwise. Forgive us if we are skeptical that Ford’s future EV truck will cost buyers “$30K.” We just don’t see how that could possibly happen.

EV Trucks Killed Before Launch
The Fisker Alaska, Nikola Badger, Bollinger truck, Ram Rev, Lordstown Motors EV truck, and a long list of other trucks have died before launch. In some cases, the EV company itself failed; in others, the manufacturers realized that there just isn’t a market for an EV truck in America.

Conclusion - EV Trucks Are a Failed Experiment
It’s been 29 years since the modern age of the EV in America began, and it has been over four years since customer deliveries of EV pickups began. What we know for certain is that at its peak, 92% of American shoppers opt not to buy an EV of any kind, and that less than 1% of American shoppers have ever purchased an EV truck. Heading into 2026, there is no evidence we can see to prove that these numbers are not headed down to even lower numbers.

What say you, EV truck fans? What angle are we missing? Tell us in the comments section below. 

Image of Tesla Cybertruck by John Goreham
 

John Goreham is the Vice President of the New England Motor Press Association and an expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE int). In addition to his fourteen years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can connect with John on LinkedIn and follow his work on his personal X channel or on our X channel. John employs grammar and punctuation software when proofreading, and he sometimes uses image generation tools.