After sidelining the Cybertruck as he bet Tesla’s future on the self-driving Cybercab, Elon Musk now says customers still waiting for their electric truck might not get one after all.
In an article published Monday morning on
“We’ll try to make as many as possible before we close the line in about 8 months, but we’ll have to return a lot of people’s deposits,” Musk said Monday.
The news comes as some fans of the boxy, futuristic Cybertruck have said on social media that they are placing new orders or upgrading their existing Cybertruck orders before the vehicle’s production ends. As of Monday, Tesla’s website appeared to still be accepting new orders.
Musk said in his latest post that Tesla was stopping production of the Cybertruck not because the vehicle was unprofitable, but because “the opportunity cost of the complexity of the Cybertruck is far outweighed by the value of the additional production of the Cybercab.”
The Cybertruck, unlike other Tesla vehicles like the Model Y, has struggled to achieve and maintain high sales since its release in 2023. When the vehicle was first announced in 2019, Musk hailed it as the best Tesla product “ever.” He then predicted that Tesla would make between 250,000 and half a million units of the vehicle per year. Yet between 2024 and 2025, Cybertruck sales fell 48%, from 38,965 to 20,237.
During the third quarter of this year, Tesla sold about 11,586, according to Kelley Blue Book. Meanwhile, Tesla sold 262,491 Model Ys and 106,962 Model 3s during the same period.
In recent years, Tesla has discontinued other models like the Model S luxury sedan and Model Tesla’s focus may shift further away from cars as it considers a merger with Musk’s other public company, SpaceXAI.
A cult that follows
Certainly, the Cybertruck has always garnered a cult following for its unique design despite, or sometimes because of, the association with Musk, whose shift to the right has made him a close advisor to President Trump and the head of the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE).
After a brief spat with Trump, he returned to the fold and reportedly spent up to $474 million during the midterm election cycle promoting Republican candidates. But many of his favored candidates lost, following a surprisingly strong performance by the Democratic Party in last week’s midterms.
The end of production of the Cybertruck also drew criticism from Tesla fans who accused the company of neglecting existing customers while Elon Musk aspires to a future in which consumers do not own their own vehicles.
“Observing the decisions made by Tesla recently has left me perplexed as a consumer. We have gone from having a large choice of vehicles to having reduced vehicles,” wrote one X user.
When Tesla unveiled the Cybercab concept in 2024, Musk described the vehicle as “a little living room” rather than a car in the traditional sense. He proposed a future of “individualized public transportation,” in which people would not necessarily need to own a car, but could buy one if they wanted.
He noted that owning a vehicle can be expensive, between the price of the car, insurance and storage. But the price per Cybercab ride, he predicted, would be about 30 to 40 cents per mile.
“The average passenger car is only used about 10 hours a week out of 168 hours. So the vast majority of the time, cars aren’t doing anything. But if they were autonomous, they could be used, I don’t know, 5 times as much?” Musk said at the time.
In response to Musk’s post on Monday, X users pushed back against this view.
“The problem is, no one is going to want to give up their personal car for a rideshare service. Are you going to wipe out Uber? Yeah. Are you going to be every American’s daily transportation via Robotaxi anywhere in the near future? No,” the user wrote.
Other X users complained that the company was cutting off customers whose needs aren’t met by other vehicles in Tesla’s lineup, while others said Tesla should increase vehicle production without reducing it.
“This still makes no sense. Why even make the Cybertruck in the first place?” one user wrote.
Gn bussni
