Tesla will wind down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of next year, CEO Elon Musk has announced. In a post on X earlier today, he said the move is “to make room for increased Cybercab production”, referring to the two-seat robotaxi that’s also built at the Austin plant.
Musk didn’t give a firm end date, say how many more trucks will be built before then or say what happens to outstanding orders. It’s also unclear whether production will move to another plant or stop altogether, as Giga Texas is the only factory that builds the Cybertruck.
Cybertruck lead engineer Wes Morrill also posted about the news, saying the truck “was an incredible technology development platform and lives on through Cybercab”. He thanked everyone who worked on it, as well as the owners whose adventures he has followed. Replying to an owner’s question, he added that Tesla will maintain spare parts and that service support will continue.
Tech firsts and oddities
Morrill’s description of the Cybertruck as a technology development platform is a fair one. It was the first Tesla with an 800-volt high-voltage architecture, and it swapped the industry-standard 12-volt low-voltage system for a 48-volt one. Quadrupling the voltage cuts the current needed for the same power to a quarter, so thinner, lighter wiring can be used throughout. Tesla even sent other carmakers’ CEOs a guide to building a 48-volt car, which Ford CEO Jim Farley confirmed receiving. If the 48-volt battery goes flat, the truck can still be jump-started from a regular 12-volt one.
The truck’s electronics are linked by what Tesla calls Etherloop, a gigabit Ethernet cable that loops around the cabin. It carries digital audio to every speaker, signals from the microphones used for active noise cancellation and video from the cameras to the Full Self-Driving computer, and Tesla says it halves the weight of the communication wiring.
It’s also the first Tesla with steer-by-wire, which has no mechanical connection between the squared-off steering wheel and the front wheels. A pair of electric motors on the front steering rack does the work, while a third motor at the back provides up to 10 degrees of rear-wheel steering. The Infiniti Q50 had steer-by-wire before it, but kept a steering column as a backup, so the Cybertruck is the first production car to do without one entirely.
Then there’s the single giant wiper that sweeps the whole of the steeply raked windscreen. In June 2024, Tesla recalled 11,688 trucks because excessive electrical current could cause its motor controller to fail, and replaced the wiper motors for free.
The body panels are unpainted, ultra-hard stainless steel that Tesla calls an exoskeleton, and the company says it’s bulletproof, demonstrating that with a Thompson submachine gun. The “armour glass” is rated to survive a baseball fired at 113 km/h. That’s a nod to the 2019 unveiling, when designer Franz von Holzhausen cracked the prototype’s windows with a metal ball, and Tesla even sells an “OMFG” decal poking fun at it.
Other quirks include the wheel torque figures Tesla quoted instead of motor torque, which reach a claimed 13,959 Nm on the tri-motor Cyberbeast, and the optional range extender battery that takes up about a third of the bed and can only be fitted by a service centre. The bed’s power outlets can supply up to 11.5 kW to tools, other EVs or even a house.
The truck’s teething problems were just as distinctive. Its aero wheel covers had to be redesigned after they rubbed against the tyres, and accelerator pedal pads could come loose and get trapped by the trim because of lubricant used during assembly. In 2025, Tesla recalled every Cybertruck it had built because a stainless steel cantrail panel could fall off. NHTSA’s database lists 11 recalls for 2024 model year trucks alone.
Sales well short of plan
Tesla doesn’t report Cybertruck sales separately. Instead, the truck is counted under “Other Models” together with the Model S, Model X, Semi and Cybercab. That category fell 48% year-on-year to 8,295 deliveries in the third quarter of 2026, down from 12,364 in the second quarter.
Model S and Model X production ended in April, so most of those deliveries are Cybertrucks. Electrek estimates that Tesla delivered 7,000 to 8,000 of them in the quarter. That’s a pace of around 30,000 a year, against the 250,000 units a year that Tesla had planned the production line for.
Cox Automotive’s estimates show the same decline in the US, the truck’s main market. The Cybertruck sold 14,416 units there in the third quarter of 2024 alone, compared with 20,237 in the whole of 2025, and 3,519 and 3,744 in the first and second quarters of this year.
A cheaper dual-motor version began reaching customers in late June, but Tesla raised Cybertruck prices by USD5,000 in August, so the dual-motor now starts at USD74,990.
It has only ever been built in left-hand drive, and last month, Tesla cancelled the Cybertruck for Australia and New Zealand, both right-hand-drive markets, nearly seven years after reservations opened there in November 2019. Everyone who reserved one has had their order cancelled and will get a full refund of their AUD150 (about RM431) deposit. To make up for it, Tesla is offering them a free one-year Full Self-Driving (Supervised) subscription, worth AUD1,788 (RM5,137), if they order a Model 3 or Model Y instead.
The truck came to Malaysia for a public display in 2024, but it was never sold here.
Cybercab takes over
Cybercab production began at Giga Texas in April this year, and in September, Tesla started offering paid rides to the public in limited areas of Austin. Musk expects the robotaxi, which has butterfly doors and no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors, to become Tesla’s highest-volume vehicle.
It still has to clear regulatory questions, though. Reuters reports that the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is still asking whether Tesla properly self-certified the Cybercab as compliant with federal motor vehicle safety standards.
You can see the Cybercab for yourself in Malaysia, as it’s touring malls in the Klang Valley and Penang. It’s at Sunway Square Mall until November 9, then moves to Pavilion Damansara Heights from November 10 to 11 and Gurney Plaza in Penang from November 13 to 22.
GALLERY: Tesla Cybertruck on display in Malaysia
