Bloomberg’s Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull took a look at Tesla’s quarterly sales report yesterday and noticed one model was clearly falling short of expectations: the Cybertruck. Plus: Sperm-freezing startups bring the process home, and coffee prices are so high, bean thefts are increasing.

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Tesla Inc. reported global sales of 384,122 units in the second quarter—a 13% drop from a year ago, but better than what many analysts had expected from the “whisper numbers.” Tesla once vowed to make 20 million cars a year, but those days are long gone. Elon Musk has pivoted the company to focus on autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence and robotics.

There’s another storyline worth following, though: the fate of the Blade Runner-esque Cybertruck, or what I am hereby coining the Cyberdud.

Tesla makes five vehicles: the Model S, X, 3, Y and the Cybertruck. The 3 and Y accounted for more than 97% of Tesla’s global sales in the second quarter. The company lumps sales of the S, X and Cybertruck into one category in its report, called “other models,” which represents less than 3% of total sales.

Musk and President Donald Trump during a Tesla event on the South Lawn of the White House in March. Photograph: Alamy 

The fact that the Cybertruck is so low volume that it isn’t broken out separately says a lot about the angular, polarizing vehicle that’s come to embody Musk himself. Tesla began deliveries of the Cybertruck on Nov. 30, 2023, almost two years ago.

But sales of the “other models” are collapsing. A year ago, Tesla sold 21,551 “other models.” In the first quarter of 2025, it sold 12,811. In the second quarter, just 10,394. That’s a 19% slide for “other models” in a quarter that saw a pickup overall from the start of the year.

Before the Cybertruck even came out, Musk warned that selling it would be challenging. He estimated that it would take the company 12 to 18 months of “blood, sweat and tears” and said that Tesla is unlikely to reach an annualized production rate of 250,000 Cybertrucks until sometime in 2025.

We’re halfway through the year, and nowhere near that production rate. Tesla produced just 13,409 “other models” in the second quarter, while the sales dropped 52% from a year ago.

“This is concerning as Cybertruck has, likely, seen a material stall in deliveries,” George Gianarikas, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity, said in a note to clients.

In Brief

• A surprise US jobs report showed the jobless rate dropping to 4.1%. That would slam the door on the possibility of a July rate cut from the Fed.
• House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is blocking a final vote on Republicans’ tax and spending package with a lengthy floor speech bashing the bill.
• Billionaire investor Bill Ackman is backing incumbent Eric Adams to take on Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race in November.
• Dr. Phil’s Merit Street Media filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday amid a dispute with a partner. Previously in Businessweek: Can Dr. Phil’s Streaming Makeover Find an Audience in the MAGA Era?

DIY Kits Lower a Barrier to Sperm Freezing

Illustration: Ibrahim Rayintakath for Bloomberg Businessweek

Last summer, Alexander McKinnon was always feeling tired. “I would lie on the couch at 2 in the afternoon and fall asleep,” he says. The founder of a biotech startup in Boston, he initially thought it was the byproduct of a demanding job, but as time passed, his exhaustion didn’t subside. By September his doctor had run a blood test and found his “super fatigue” was tied to low levels of testosterone. McKinnon was prescribed steroids to boost his energy. The trade-off was that the injections would severely reduce his sperm count.

McKinnon, 32, and his wife weren’t ready to start a family, but they didn’t want to risk their ability to do so in the future. “That’s when I froze my sperm,” he says.

Sperm banks have been around for decades, but the advent in the past several years of low-cost chemical preservatives administered at home, which can extend the life of a sample for days, lowered the barriers to access by eliminating the awkward trip to a clinic or doctor’s office. Changing attitudes among health-conscious men are helping create a mini industry of direct-to-consumer startups that take semen by mail for storage and offer reproductive health analysis through an app.

Adam Popescu writes about some of the companies and the challenges involved: Sperm Freezing Is a New Hot Market for Startups

Fears About Coffee Heists Are Rising

Illustration: Valentin Tkach for Bloomberg Businessweek

Donizete Guidini was transporting 30 metric tons of coffee along a country highway in São Paulo on an April night when a car full of armed men forced him to stop. The hijackers directed him to a nearby gas station at gunpoint, stole the truck and cargo, and left Guidini blindfolded in a sugarcane field.

Brazil, the world’s largest producer and exporter of coffee, has long grappled with bean thefts by petty criminals and organized gangs alike. But with prices for the commodity sharply elevated compared with past years, farmers and industry groups are warning that the harvest season that runs from late May through September could go down as the worst heist year in recent memory.

Early this year, prices for arabica beans—the variety generally used for high-end brews—hit the highest level on record following several disappointing harvests. Pressure has since eased slightly, but year-to-date prices are still almost double the 2023 average. “Crime is an economic activity. From the moment you have a high-value-added coffee harvest, it becomes an attraction for criminals,” says Guilherme Derrite, secretary for public safety of São Paulo.

Sam Cowie writes that industry groups in key coffee-growing regions are rolling out new protections and urging farmers to be extra vigilant: For Brazil’s Criminals, Coffee Beans Are the Target          

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