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Tesla will stop making the Cybertruck next year, according to CEO Elon Musk, who said on X that the company will use the factory space to build more two-seater Cybercab robotaxis.
The decision to wind down the futuristic, steel-clad EV comes after just a few short years of underwhelming sales. When Musk handed over the first few Cybertrucks in late 2023, he predicted Tesla would sell around 250,000 per year. It was supposed to be such a cornerstone of Tesla’s future that, before construction, the company talked about its Texas factory as the “Cybertruck factory.” But Tesla has instead sold just tens of thousands — total — over the last three years.
Tesla is killing off the Cybertruck at a moment when it is trying to become more of an AI and robotics-focused company. A big part of that is its robotaxi ambitions.
The company has spent the last two months putting Cybercabs on the streets in its hometown of Austin, Texas. With no major incidents to date, the company has said it plans to expand the Cybercabs to other cities, starting with Dallas later this month. (Tesla also operates robotaxi versions of its Model Y SUVs in Austin, Houston, and Dallas, as well as three cities in Florida.)
This is the third product Tesla has discontinued in order to fuel those greater ambitions. Earlier this year, the company decided to end production of the Model S sedan and Model X SUV, and decided to instead use the factory space dedicated to those vehicles to make Optimus humanoid robots.
First announced in 2019, the Cybertruck was a product that Musk long obsessed over.
“Probably my personal favorite for the next product is the pickup truck, and we are going to just do an amazing pickup truck,” he said on one of Tesla’s earnings calls that year.
Musk promised the Cybertruck would be radical, inspired by the designs of cyberpunk sci-fi stories like Blade Runner. While that certainly bore out in the design, the company over-promised on the basics of the Cybertruck from the jump. During the now-infamous reveal event in 2019, where head designer Franz von Holzhausen cracked the Cybertruck’s windows with steel balls, Tesla said the EV was supposed to start at under $40,000 and have up to 500 miles of range. It achieved neither of those figures.
Instead, the truck was delayed for two years, in part thanks to the covid-19 pandemic. When it finally did hit the market in late 2023, Tesla handed over the first few Cybertrucks to customers in a short, somewhat odd for Tesla event (by the company’s own standards, at least), which saw a poorly-lit Musk standing in a truck bed promising the truck was “the finest in apocalyptic equipment” fit for “late civilization vibes.” The base price had inflated to around $60,000, and the top-end range had shrunk by over 100 miles.
The truck has struggled on the market ever since. The polarizing design never seemed to sit well with buyers, especially at a higher-than-expected price. Then, during its first full year of sales in 2024, Musk became a major financial backer of Donald Trump, which turned the instantly recognizable Cybertruck into a target for protestors. That continued into 2025 as Musk led the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which fired thousands of federal workers.
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Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.
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