Tesla is pulling the plug on the Cybertruck. Chief executive Elon Musk announced on Friday that the electric carmaker will wind down production of its angular stainless-steel pickup at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of 2027, a little more than three and a half years after the first trucks reached customers.
Musk said the factory space would be given over to building more Cybercabs, the driverless robotaxi he has made central to Tesla’s push into autonomous vehicles. In a short post on X, he wrote that Tesla “will be winding down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of next year to make room for increased Cybercab production.”
The decision is a major retreat from one of Musk’s most personal projects. The Cybertruck was once presented as a futuristic rival to America’s legacy pickup trucks, with a bulletproof-looking steel body and a shape unlike anything else on the road. But buyers never arrived in the numbers Tesla expected.
Sales at a tenth of the plan
When production began, Musk had predicted annual sales of 250,000 trucks, and Tesla built its Texas line for that volume. The reality has been far smaller. According to automotive data platform Kelley Blue Book, Tesla sold just 20,237 Cybertrucks in the United States in 2025, down 48 percent from 38,965 in 2024.
The picture in 2026 has been weaker still. Cox Automotive estimates only 3,519 Cybertruck sales in the first quarter of the year and 3,744 in the second, down from 14,416 in the third quarter of 2024. Tesla does not report Cybertruck sales separately, grouping them with the Model S, Model X and Semi under “Other Models”, and that whole group delivered only 8,295 vehicles in the third quarter of 2026, down 48 percent year on year.
The truck’s heavy, angular design also limited it to a handful of markets. Reuters has reported that the stainless-steel body complicated approval in Europe, where pedestrian-impact safety rules are strict. The Cybertruck has also been recalled 11 times since it went on sale in late 2023, according to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
It is not yet clear whether Cybertruck production will move to another plant or end altogether. The Austin factory is the only known Tesla facility equipped to build the model’s specialised components. Responding to a user on X, Musk called the Cybertruck the “best vehicle Tesla has ever made” and its wind-down the “end of an era”, while lead engineer Wes Morrill confirmed the four-year production run is coming to a close.
For Tesla, the message is clear: the company’s future now rests on autonomy rather than the pickup. The Cybercab has yet to prove itself commercially, but Musk has made it the centrepiece of Tesla’s plans. The Cybertruck will remain on the roads for years to come, but its factory life is now measured in months.
