- Americans’ appetite for electric pickup trucks has yet to balloon to what manufacturers were hoping for a couple of years ago.
- The best-selling battery-powered pickup barely sold 27,000 units last year and was ultimately canceled.
- Meanwhile, the second model on the list saw its sales numbers freefall.
Electric pickup trucks were supposed to be the next great thing in the automotive world. Ultimately, though, fewer and fewer Americans are finding enough reasons to ditch their dependable gas trucks in favor of a heavier, shorter-range battery-powered alternative.
EV trucks still have numerous advantages, like exporting power from their huge batteries to power job sites and the owners’ homes, as well as being very silent, but that wasn’t enough to grow the segment to a level envisioned by automakers a few years ago. The discontinuation of the $7,500 federal tax credit didn’t do it any favors, either.
As a result, 2025 was yet another year that proved electric pickups are not the right answer to what Americans need right now.
The best-selling model in the segment, the Ford F-150 Lightning, sold just 27,307 units last year, down 18.5% compared to 2024. The lackluster sales performance and chronic unprofitability prompted Ford to drop the model altogether late last year, leaving just five other noteworthy electric pickups on sale in the United States.
The Tesla Cybertruck, once hailed as a future sales hit, had the biggest drop among its peers, selling 20,237 units in 12 months, down 48.1% compared to 2024. That’s a far cry from the 500,000-mark envisioned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at one point, and a stark reminder that pushing forward with a pet project that defies all norms could come back to bite.
Rivian’s R1T, meanwhile, had an even sadder performance last year, which promptly brought it to last place on the best-selling electric pickups list. One of the original mass-produced EV trucks, the bug-eyed R1T sold just 7,416 units last year, a significant 33.1% drop compared to 2024. Rivian sales to date are overwhelmingly for the R1S SUV instead.
In all this chaos, General Motors was the only manufacturer that saw gains for its electric pickups, but the sales volumes themselves still leave a lot to be desired. The GMC Hummer EV pickup and SUV had nearly 16,000 combined sales last year, up 12.8% from the year before. The Chevrolet Silverado EV recorded a healthy 51.8% increase, reaching 11,275 units, while the GMC Sierra EV banked 7,996 sales (versus the 1,788 it had in 2024).
Altogether, the sales of all these electric pickups reached 90,019 units, which is a 15.6% drop from 2024 and simply not enough for this sort of vehicle to survive in the long term.
Stellantis pulled the plug on the electric Ram 1500 pickup before it ever saw the light of day, and it was followed by Ford with the F-150 Lightning, which was a best-seller for most of its life. Now, automakers are turning to extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) platforms, in the hopes that it will blend the smoothness and instant torque of an EV with the lack of range anxiety that a gas truck offers.
Scout Motors and Ram are both working on vehicles that are essentially EVs with a gas generator. Whether or not they’ll have what it takes to sell big numbers is anyone’s guess, though. However, experts are optimistic about the future of electric cars in general, with Cox Automotive saying that sales will increase in the long run. "The U.S. market will become more electrified in the coming decade, with product innovation and infrastructure improvements supporting gradual sales growth," the firm said.
The best-selling electric pickup trucks in America in 2025
Data from Cox Automotive
1. Ford F-150 Lightning: 27,307 (-18.5%)
2. Tesla Cybertruck: 20,237 (-48.1%)
3. GMC Hummer EV Pickup & SUV: 15,788 (+12.8%)
4. Chevrolet Silverado EV: 11,275 (+51.8%)
5. GMC Sierra EV: 7,996 (vs. 1,788 in 2024)
6. Rivian R1T: 7,416 (-33.1%)
