Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production around mid-2027 to build more Cybercabs

SAN JOSE - Tesla will wind down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of 2027 to make room for more Cybercab robotaxis, CEO Elon Musk said on X late Thursday. His exact words were 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 post went up at 10:30 p.m. Pacific Time on Nov. 5. Tesla's quarterly capacity tables list only one Cybertruck line, in Texas, rated at more than 125,000 trucks a year, so the move would end production of the stainless steel pickup about seven and a half years after it was unveiled.

Musk did not give a final build date or say whether the truck would be made anywhere else. Replying to an owner who called the news the end of an era, he wrote: "True, but the Cybertruck fleet will be around for a long time." Wes Morrill, who lists himself on X as Cybertruck lead engineer, wrote that the truck "was an incredible technology development platform and lives on through Cybercab." Musk reposted Morrill's note.

A cracked window and 250,000 orders

Photo: A Cybertruck prototype on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles in November 2022, a year before customer deliveries began Ron Raffety / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (shared under the same license).

Tesla unveiled the Cybertruck in November 2019. Its 2019 annual report said that to meet the durability of work vehicles, the company planned "a thick cold-rolled stainless steel alloy and ultra-strong glass" while keeping range strong through battery engineering. At the launch, a steel ball thrown at a side window cracked the glass. Musk explained on X that a sledgehammer blow to the door moments earlier had cracked the base of the glass, and he posted video of the same throw failing to mark the window before the show.

Orders came fast. Two days after the unveiling, Musk counted 146,000 reservations, with 42% choosing dual-motor, 41% tri-motor and 17% single-motor. Five days after the show he posted "250k." Customer deliveries did not start until November 2023, at Gigafactory Texas, according to Tesla's 2023 annual report, which called the truck "a full-size electric pickup truck with a stainless steel exterior that has the utility and strength of a truck while featuring the speed of a sports car." Tesla's investor-relations page still lists the Nov. 30, 2023, Cybertruck delivery event at the Austin headquarters.

The ramp was slow by Tesla's standards. In its fourth-quarter 2023 update, Tesla warned that the Cybertruck ramp would be "longer than other models given its manufacturing complexity." By April 2024 the plant had built more than 1,000 trucks in a single week. Production more than tripled sequentially in the second quarter of 2024, and Tesla said the truck was "on track to achieve profitability by end of year." In the third quarter of 2024, Cybertruck production achieved a positive gross margin for the first time. Tesla also said that quarter that the truck was the third best-selling electric vehicle in the U.S., behind only Model Y and Model 3.

What was new

In a January 2025 update covering the fourth quarter of 2024, Tesla listed 12 advances it made with the truck and marked which ones it planned to reuse. The full list:

• A stainless steel exoskeleton, or outer shell, of cold-rolled full-hard stainless steel that carries crash loads and raises torsional stiffness; Tesla said high dent and corrosion resistance cut concern over daily wear. Not marked for future vehicles.
• An automated "air bending" process Tesla developed so the hard steel is bent without being touched by tooling and is never scratched. Not marked for future vehicles.
• Tesla's largest castings, made with a custom alloy on a 9,000-ton press for the front and rear structures, cutting parts and complexity; scrap is fully recyclable. Marked for future vehicles.
• Integrated audio that uses the body structure as the reactive volume for dual subwoofers. Marked for future vehicles.
• A 48-volt electrical system that Tesla says cuts electrical current by four times and heat by 16 times compared with the usual automotive voltage, shrinking the wiring harness. Marked for future vehicles.
• An 800-volt battery system that enables higher power, including 500-kilowatt charging, with smaller cables. Marked for future vehicles.
• Etherloop, a gigabit ethernet communication network Tesla says is 1,000 times faster than traditional automotive buses and eliminates about 70% of cross-vehicle wires. Marked for future vehicles.
• Powershare bidirectional charging, which can supply up to 11.5 kilowatts to a home, job site or other devices. Marked for future vehicles.
• Custom laminated glass developed for strength, sound isolation and UV blocking while keeping a panoramic view. Marked for future vehicles.
• Adaptive air suspension with 12 inches of ride-height adjustment and up to 16 inches of ground clearance. Marked for future vehicles.
• Steer-by-wire, which replaces the steering shaft with redundant controllers and motors and allows an adjustable steering ratio. Marked for future vehicles.
• About 10 degrees of rear-wheel steering, which shortens the turning radius at low speeds and adds stability at high speeds. Marked for future vehicles.

Tesla marked 10 of the 12 for use in future vehicles. The two it did not mark were the stainless exoskeleton and the air-bending process, the features that most defined the truck's look. In the same update, Tesla said its in-house 4680 cell line had hit a production rate exceeding the equivalent of 2,500 Cybertrucks a week.

Range, price and official ratings

Tesla does not publish a single permanent Cybertruck price sheet in its SEC filings, and the live configurator on tesla.com was not reachable for this revision. What Tesla has put in primary updates is limited but clear on one trim. In its first-quarter 2025 update, Tesla said Gigafactory Texas had launched the Long Range Cybertruck with 362 miles of range, "starting under $63k after incentives." The same update said Tesla had launched an IRA-compliant 4680 cell that made the Cybertruck eligible for the $7,500 consumer tax credit. The U.S. Department of Energy's fuel-economy database lists a 2025 Cybertruck AWD at 325 miles of EPA range (79 MPGe combined) and a Cybertruck Long Range at 335 miles (82 MPGe combined). Those EPA figures are lower than Tesla's 362-mile Long Range claim; both numbers are official, and they measure different things.

Crash tests and recalls

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gives the all-wheel-drive Cybertruck five stars overall for the 2026 model year, with five stars in front and side crash tests and four stars for rollover risk. The 2024 all-wheel-drive truck carries the same overall five-star rating. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety named the 2025 and 2026 trucks a Top Safety Pick+. IIHS says its top front-crash rating applies to trucks built after April 2025, when Tesla changed the front underbody structure and footwell to improve occupant protection in small-overlap front crashes. Headlights, front crash prevention and the main crashworthiness tests are rated Good on the award-eligible trucks.

NHTSA's vehicle recall list covers the Cybertruck in 11 campaigns since January 2024, including some that also cover other Tesla models. Several significant Cybertruck-focused recalls, with populations from Tesla's Part 573 reports filed with NHTSA, include:

• 24V-276 (April 2024): 3,878 trucks; accelerator pedal pad could dislodge and trap the pedal. Tesla replaces or reworks the pedal assembly for free.
• 24V-457 (June 2024): 11,383 trucks; trunk-bed sail applique could loosen or detach. Free repair.
• 24V-832 (November 2024): 2,431 trucks; drive inverter fault could cause a loss of propulsion. Free inverter replacement.
• 25V-170 (March 2025): 46,096 trucks, the largest Cybertruck-only population; the cant rail, a stainless steel trim panel along the roof edge, could delaminate and come off. Free cant-rail replacement.
• 25V-699 (October 2025): 63,619 trucks on software older than 2025.38.3; front parking lights could be too bright. Fixed with a free over-the-air update.
• 25V-735 (October 2025): 6,197 trucks with a service-installed off-road light bar that could loosen. Free remedy.
• 26V-255 (April 2026): 173 trucks with 18-inch steel wheels; brake-rotor stud holes could crack. Free rotor, hub and lug-nut replacement.

Recall repairs on existing trucks are free through Tesla service, the Part 573 filings say.

Sales

Tesla does not report Cybertruck sales by themselves. It folds the truck into an "Other Models" line that has also included Model S, Model X and, more recently, early Semi and Cybercab volumes. Cox Automotive's Kelley Blue Book estimates, published in Cox's own PDF, put U.S. Cybertruck sales at 38,965 in 2024 and 20,237 in 2025, a drop of 48.1%. By those estimates the Cybertruck outsold Ford's F-150 Lightning in 2024, 38,965 to 33,510, and trailed it in 2025, 20,237 to 27,307. Tesla called the Cybertruck the best-selling electric pickup in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2024.

Tesla's own "Other Models" delivery totals show the same slide after the 2024 peak. Deliveries in that bucket were 22,969 in the fourth quarter of 2023 as customer Cybertruck deliveries began, then 17,027, 21,551, 22,915 and 23,640 across the four quarters of 2024, according to Tesla's quarterly updates. In 2025 the line fell to 12,881, 10,394, 15,933 and 11,642 by quarter. In 2026 it was 16,130 in the first quarter, 12,364 in the second and 8,295 in the third, down from 15,933 a year earlier. Production of "Other Models" fell to 7,004 in the third quarter of 2026. Those totals are not a pure Cybertruck count, especially before Tesla decommissioned the Model S and Model X lines at Fremont earlier in 2026, but they are the only vehicle counts Tesla publishes that include the truck.

Photo: Building 1 at Tesla's Gigafactory Texas near Austin in June 2022. Tesla builds both the Cybertruck and the Cybercab at the plant Larry D. Moore / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

The stated reason, and the record behind it

Musk's only stated reason is factory space for the Cybercab, which Tesla calls its purpose-built autonomous vehicle for its robotaxi fleet. Tesla's third-quarter 2026 capacity table lists the Texas Cybertruck line and the Texas Cybercab line at the same installed annual capacity: more than 125,000 vehicles each. The Cybercab line is shown as in production; the Cybertruck line is still listed as in production in that table, months before the mid-2027 wind-down Musk described.

Tesla's own filings point to other pressures, though the company has not tied them to this decision. First, batteries. Tesla said in the same third-quarter 2026 update that "battery availability remains a limiting factor" on the pace of global vehicle production, and that it continues to increase 4680 cell output "to support the ramps of both Cybercab and Tesla Semi along with higher Model Y volumes." Texas 4680 capacity is listed at more than 40 gigawatt-hours a year. The Cybertruck runs on 4680 cells, Tesla reported in January 2025, so each truck uses cells a Cybercab, Semi or Model Y pack could use.

Second, demand. U.S. sales of 20,237 last year, by Cox's estimate, would fill about one-sixth of the Texas line's listed capacity of more than 125,000, though Tesla also sells the truck outside the U.S. Tesla began Cybertruck deliveries in the United Arab Emirates in the first quarter of 2026. Earlier, in April 2025, it said it planned Cybertruck deliveries in Saudi Arabia later that year as "the first Cybertruck market outside of North America."

Third, precedent. In its second-quarter 2026 update, Tesla said it had "decommissioned the manufacturing lines for Models S & X at our Fremont Factory" to install first-generation Optimus humanoid robot lines. In the first-quarter 2026 update, Tesla said that first-generation Optimus line was "designed for 1 million robots a year" and would replace the Model S and Model X lines in Fremont. That is the same pattern Musk now describes for Cybertruck and Cybercab in Texas.

What it stood for

Tesla's 2023 annual report pitched its first pickup as having "the utility and strength of a truck while featuring the speed of a sports car." The January 2025 update listed "bioweapon defense mode" among the truck's features and said the company deployed a fleet of Cybertrucks equipped with Starlink in the Los Angeles area to help first responders and people hit by the fires get electricity and Wi-Fi. Morrill thanked everyone who worked on the truck for "making the future looking like the future," and thanked owners whose adventures he said he would keep following.

Photo: A Tesla Cybercab concept on display at Santana Row in San Jose in November 2024. Tesla began building production Cybercabs in Texas this year Dllu / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (shared under the same license).

What comes next

Tesla began building Cybercabs at Gigafactory Texas in the second quarter of 2026, started engineering test drives of production Cybercabs on public roads that quarter, and began offering employee rides on the Gigafactory Texas campus in July. It started giving robotaxi rides in Cybercabs in Austin on Sept. 3, its third-quarter update says. By the end of that quarter Tesla said cumulative unsupervised Robotaxi miles had reached nearly 2 million, up eightfold from the prior quarter, with Austin operating hours from 6 a.m. to midnight. The company said in its first-quarter 2026 update that once in production, Cybercab "will begin to replace the existing Model Y fleet and will be the largest volume vehicle in the fleet over time."

Alongside the Cybercab ramp, Tesla began volume production of the Semi in Nevada, where the capacity table now lists 25,000 trucks a year, and unveiled a next-generation Roadster on Oct. 15, the third-quarter update says. Trucks already on the road are not part of the production wind-down. Musk's reply that the fleet "will be around for a long time" is the company's clearest public statement on that point so far.

Source: Musk on X, Nov. 5; Tesla Q3 2026 update; Tesla Q4 2024 update; Tesla Q1 2025 update; Tesla Q1 2026 update; Tesla Q2 2026 update; Tesla 2023 Form 10-K; Tesla 2019 Form 10-K; NHTSA Part 573 report 25V-170; IIHS ratings; Cox Automotive Q4 2025 EV report; EPA fuel economy, Cybertruck AWD.