After sidelining the Cybertruck as he bets Tesla’s future on the autonomous Cybercab, Elon Musk now says customers still waiting for their electric truck may not get one after all.
In an early Monday post on X, he said the number of Cybertrucks ordered “far exceeds our production rate,” which means many buyers will be out of luck following the CEO’s announcement Friday that Tesla would be “winding down” the electric truck’s production by the middle of next year.
“We will try to make as many as possible before shutting down the line in about 8 months, but will have to return deposits for a lot of people,” Musk said Monday.
The news comes as some fans of the boxy and futuristic-looking Cybertruck said on social media that they were putting in new orders or upgrading their existing Cybertruck orders before the vehicle ends production. As of Monday, Tesla’s website seemed to still be accepting new orders.
Musk said in his latest post that Tesla was shutting down Cybertruck production not because the vehicle was unprofitable but because, “the opportunity cost of the complexity of Cybertruck is vastly outweighed by the value of incremental Cybercab production.”
The Cybertruck, unlike other Tesla vehicles like Model Y, has struggled to reach and maintain high sales since it was released in 2023. When the vehicle was first announced in 2019, Musk hailed it as Tesla’s best product “ever.” He later predicted Tesla would make between 250,000 and half-a-million units of the vehicle per year. Yet, between 2024 and 2025, Cybertruck sales plummeted 48% to 20,237 from 38,965.
Through the third quarter of this year, Tesla had sold an estimated 11,586, according to Kelley Blue Book. Meanwhile, Tesla sold 262,491 Model Ys and 106,962 Model 3s over that same time.
In recent years, Tesla has discontinued other models like the Model S luxury sedan and Model X SUV, narrowing its consumer vehicle lineup as Musk increasingly shifts the company’s focus to autonomous vehicles, but also humanoid robots. Tesla’s focus could drift further away from cars as it explores a merger with Musk’s other public company, SpaceXAI.
A cult following
To be sure, the Cybertruck has still amassed a cult following for its unique design despite, or sometimes because of, the association with Musk, whose rightward shift once made him a close adviser of President Trump and the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
After a brief falling out with Trump, he returned to the fold and reportedly spent as much as $474 million in the midterm election cycle to boost Republican candidates. But many of his preferred candidates lost, following a surprisingly strong showing for the Democratic Party in the midterms last week.
The end of the Cybertruck’s production run also triggered criticism from Tesla fans who accused the company of neglecting existing customers as Musk chases a future where consumers don’t own their own vehicles.
“Watching the decisions Tesla is making recently has just left me puzzled as a consumer. We went from having lots of choices in vehicles. To those being whittled down,” wrote one X user.
When Tesla unveiled the Cybercab concept in 2024, Musk portrayed the vehicle as “a little lounge” rather than a car in the traditional sense. He pitched a future of “individualized mass transit,” where people wouldn’t necessarily need to own a car, but could buy one if they wanted.
He noted that ownership can be expensive, between the price of the car, insurance, and storage. But the price per ride in a Cybercab, he predicted, would be about 30 to 40 cents per mile.
“Your average passenger car is only used about 10 hours a week out of a 168 hours. So the vast majority of the time, cars are just doing nothing. But if they’re autonomous, they could be used, I don’t know, 5 x more?” Musk said at the time.
In reply to Musk’s post Monday, X users pushed back on this vision.
“The problem is no one is going to want to give up their personal cars for a ride share service. Are you going to annihilate uber? Yup. Are you going to be every Americans daily transport via Robotaxi anywhere in the near future? Nope,” the user wrote.
Other X users complained that the company was cutting out customers whose needs aren’t met by other vehicles in Tesla’s lineup, while others said Tesla should be expanding vehicle production not cutting it.
“This is still not making any sense. Why even make the Cybertruck in the first place?,” wrote one user.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
