Tesla will wind down production of the Cybertruck at its Texas gigafactory around the middle of next year, the chief executive, Elon Musk, said on 6 November, in remarks reported by Reuters.
Musk said in a post on X that the wind-down would allow Tesla to increase output of the newly launched Cybercab, the model he has placed at the centre of the company's robotaxi plans. It was not immediately clear whether Cybertruck production would move elsewhere or stop altogether; the Austin plant is the only known Tesla facility equipped to make the model's specialised components.
Replying 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".
The sales record is less warm. Tesla began deliveries in late 2023. According to Kelley Blue Book the company sold 20,237 Cybertrucks in the United States in 2025, down 48 per cent from 38,965 in 2024. Before the launch, Musk had predicted annual sales of 250,000.
"It doesn't make sense to keep it going when it's not meeting its targets," said Andy Palmer, the former chief executive of Aston Martin. "Every rational auto guy would say the same." He added: "It will no doubt only be a rounding error on Tesla's balance sheet, but the statistics speak for themselves."
The vehicle was divisive from its unveiling in 2019, when a demonstration intended to show the strength of its windows left two of them badly cracked. Its angular stainless-steel body was mocked by pickup purists, and safety experts predicted it would struggle to win approval in major markets. "Anywhere where you have crash regulation that takes into account pedestrian impact, that Cybertruck won't go, can't go," Palmer said, which ruled out Europe.
At the 2023 launch Musk presented it as a futuristic rival to the pickups built by General Motors and Ford, saying "finally, the future will look like the future".
Not all of the blame lies with the design. The automotive analyst Felipe Munoz noted that electric pickups from Ford and others have also sold poorly in the United States. "All of them lost the competition because electric pickups aren't popular in the US," he said.
The Cybercab that replaces it has butterfly doors and no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors. Tesla began offering paid rides in a small fleet of them in Austin in September, and has still to answer questions from the American auto safety regulator about whether it has properly self-certified the vehicle against federal motor vehicle safety standards. "Cybertruck was an incredible technology development platform and lives on through Cybercab," the Cybertruck's lead engineer, Wes Morrill, wrote on X.
This newspaper accepts the company's assessment of the vehicle without reservation, and merely wishes to combine it with the company's other figures, which is a step nobody else seems to have taken.
The Cybertruck is the best vehicle Tesla has ever made. It is also the vehicle Tesla is discontinuing, having sold 20,237 of them in a year in which it had hoped to sell 250,000, a shortfall of a little over twelve to one.
The relationship is therefore established and runs the other way from the one usually assumed. Within the Tesla range, build quality varies inversely with volume. The finest product is the one made least, and discontinuation is the highest grade the company awards.
Our analysts have applied the finding to the rest of the line-up. Every model Tesla continues to manufacture is, by the chief executive's own ranking, inferior to the one it has just stopped making, and the gap widens with each unit produced.
The implications for the Cybercab are not encouraging. It is being built in increasing numbers specifically to take the Cybertruck's place on the line, and will therefore spend its entire production life descending the quality table it was promoted into.
The Department of Unnecessary Research has offered the company a way out. The best vehicle Tesla will ever make is the one it never builds, and the Austin plant has been standing by to make it since 2019.