Tesla will stop making Cybertrucks next year: Musk
Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at its Texas Gigafactory around mid-2027, CEO Elon Musk said on Friday, after years of persistently weak sales for a futuristic model once touted as a rival to legacy pickup trucks.
Shift comes after years of weak sales
Thomson Reuters
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Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at its Texas Gigafactory around mid-2027, CEO Elon Musk said on Friday, after years of persistently weak sales for a futuristic model once touted as a rival to legacy pickup trucks.
The move is a major retreat from what has been one of Musk's pet projects. In an X post, Musk said the wind-down would let Tesla make more of the Cybercab, a robotaxi he has made central to the automaker's autonomous-vehicle ambitions, but one that has yet to prove itself commercially.
The announcement comes at the end of a bruising week for Musk, as his record political spending of nearly half a billion dollars yielded little in Tuesday's U.S. midterm elections, with the vast majority of the Republican candidates he backed losing their races.
Furthermore, his companies were on track to lose more than $180 billion US in combined market capitalization for the week.
A Tesla Cybertruck near the White House last year. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
While it wasn't immediately clear whether Cybertruck production would be moved to another facility or phased out entirely, the automaker's Austin plant is the only known Tesla facility equipped to manufacture the specialized components for the heavy, angular model.
In response to a user on X, Musk called the Cybertruck the "best vehicle Tesla has ever made" and the wind-down the "end of an era."
Tesla has been shifting its focus to robotics and autonomy, a transition analysts say comes at the expense of the electric-vehicle business it helped pioneer as Chinese rivals gain ground.
The U.S. EV maker began delivering the Cybertruck to customers in late 2023. According to automotive data platform Kelley Blue Book, the company only sold 20,237 Cybertrucks in the U.S. last year, down 48 per cent from 38,965 in 2024. Around the start of production in 2023, Musk had predicted annual sales of 250,000 units.
"It doesn't make sense to keep it going when it's not meeting its targets," said former Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer. "Every rational auto guy would say the same."
"It will no doubt only be a rounding error on Tesla's balance sheet, but the statistics speak for themselves."
Musk's SpaceX was one of the model's biggest customers last year and bought $131 million worth of Cybertrucks from Tesla in 2025 at list price, according to its IPO filing.
WATCH | The Cybertruck's unveiling in 2019:
Tesla unveils electric Cybertruck, smashes its 'bulletproof' glass
November 22, 2019|
Duration
1:11
Tesla showed off its upcoming entry into the electric truck market in a lavish launch event last night. An attempt to demonstrate its "bulletproof" glass using a metal ball backfired, however, as the windows shattered. Twice.'Cybertruck won't go, can't go'
Right from its unveiling in 2019, the Cybertruck was a controversial choice for Musk. Pickup truck purists mocked its angular design, and safety experts predicted it would be hard to gain approval for sale in key markets like Europe.
The unveiling event itself was marred when Musk tried to prove that its windows were shatterproof by having metal balls thrown at them — only to leave massive cracks in two of them.
During Cybertruck's official launch in 2023, Musk touted it as a futuristic competitor to pickup trucks from General Motors and Ford, saying "finally, the future will look like the future."
But the model has struggled to meet those expectations. Tesla has issued 11 recalls for the Cybertruck since it went on sale in late 2023, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Some vehicles required physical repairs, while others were fixed with over-the-air software updates.
WATCH | Tesla unveiled its latest auto venture last month:
Elon Musk shows off redesigned Tesla Roadster that can thrust itself into the air
October 16|
Duration
0:55
Elon Musk's car company Tesla debuted its second generation Roadster, which includes a set of cold gas thrusters and a "multi-mode" suction system that can fling the car in the air for short spurts and spin the vehicle mid-flight.Automotive analyst Felipe Munoz said that although the Cybertruck has been called a failure because of its poor sales, electric pickups from Ford and others have also flopped in the U.S. market.
"All of them lost the competition because electric pickups aren't popular in the U.S.," Munoz said.
But Cybertruck's sharp-edged, stainless steel design limited its prospects in markets like Europe, where EVs are more popular. Regulatory approval was impossible for Europe because of rules there concerning pedestrian impact.
"Anywhere where you have crash regulation that takes into account pedestrian impact, that Cybertruck won't go, can't go," former Aston Martin CEO Palmer said.
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