Tesla to end Cybertruck production in 2027 after years of weak sales

Tesla will stop producing its Cybertruck to free up capacity to build its self-driving Cybercab, CEO Elon Musk announced Friday on X. The decision follows years of weak sales for a model originally pitched as a futuristic rival to conventional pickups, Reuters reports.

Tesla will end Cybertruck production at its Texas factory around mid-2027, Musk wrote. That will free up capacity to increase production of the driverless Cybercab, the Tesla CEO said. Musk has made the autonomous EV central to Tesla’s ambitions in self-driving transportation, Reuters noted.

The Austin factory is Tesla’s only facility equipped to manufacture the electric pickup’s specialized components, Reuters reports. In a subsequent post on X, Musk confirmed that Cybertruck production would end entirely, though he expected the fleet to remain on the road “for a long time.” Cybertruck lead engineer Wes Morrill wrote on X that the model “was an incredible technology development platform and lives on through Cybercab.”

Tesla stock was up around 5% in Friday trading as of this writing.

The decision to halt production partly reflects the pickup’s “relatively limited commercial success,” Barclays analyst Dan Levy said, as quoted by Bloomberg. Tesla produces around 20,000 Cybertrucks a year, roughly 1% of its total output and a small fraction of the more than 125,000 units the Texas factory can manufacture annually, Levy noted. U.S. Cybertruck sales totaled 20,237 vehicles in 2025, down 48% from 2024, Reuters reported, citing Kelley Blue Book data.

When production began in 2023, Musk predicted annual sales of 250,000 units. SpaceX, the space company he also leads, became one of the model’s biggest buyers: in 2025, it purchased $131 million worth of the pickups at list prices, according to its prospectus.

“It doesn't make sense to keep it going when it's not meeting its targets. 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,” former Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer said, as quoted by Reuters.

While the Cybertruck has been called a failure because of weak sales, electric pickups from Ford and other manufacturers have also struggled to find buyers in the U.S., automotive analyst Felipe Munoz said. “All of them lost the competition because electric pick ups aren't popular in the US,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

Ending Cybertruck production extends a trend of Tesla shrinking its lineup, leaving it with fewer models than at any point in more than a decade, the Wall Street Journal notes. Earlier this year, the EV maker discontinued the Model S and Model X. The Model Y and Model 3 now account for the vast majority of sales.

The Cybercab is a two-seater with butterfly doors and no steering wheel, pedals, or mirrors. It is one of Musk’s key bets in his effort to transform Tesla from an automaker into an AI and robotics company. Musk has said he sees the Cybercab as the main autonomous model for a global robotaxi network. In September, Tesla began offering paid rides in a small fleet of Cybercabs in Austin. However, the company still has to answer the regulator’s questions about whether it properly self-certified the model as compliant with federal safety standards. The regulator opened its review in September.

The new model is unlikely to quickly make up for lost Cybertruck volumes: Cybercab production began only this year, and its stated installed capacity is more than 125,000 vehicles annually, Reuters writes. Of the more than 1,200 Tesla robotaxis operating in Texas, around 570 are Cybercabs, with the rest mainly Model Ys.

At its official launch in 2023, Musk pitched the Cybertruck as a futuristic competitor to pickups from General Motors and Ford. Its angular stainless-steel design limited the model’s prospects in Europe, where EVs are more popular: regulatory approval there proved impossible because of rules governing pedestrian safety, Reuters notes. “Anywhere where you have crash regulation that takes into account pedestrian impact, that Cybertruck won't go, can't go,” Palmer said.

The announcement capped a difficult week for Musk: his record political spending of almost $500 million failed to pay off in Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections, with most of the Republican candidates he backed losing. His companies were on track to lose more than $370 billion in combined market value for the week.