This looks like the end of the road for the Cybertruck.
Elon Musk said Friday that Tesla would end production of the vehicle at its Austin, Texas, factory — the only factory that makes the polarizing truck.
The change will begin “around the middle of next year to make room for increased Cybercab production,” Tesla CEO Musk said on his X social media platform.
It was not immediately clear whether Tesla planned to move production of the Cybertruck to another factory or abandon it altogether, although Cybertruck chief engineer Wes Morrill appeared to suggest the vehicle had reached its end.
“Cybertruck was an incredible platform for technology development and continues thanks to Cybercab,” he posted on X.
The announcement comes at the end of a difficult week for Musk, who has often described the Cybertruck as his favorite vehicle. On Tuesday, he saw the nearly $500 million in campaign contributions he made during the US midterm elections go to waste, amid a resounding defeat for Republican candidates.
The subsequent selloff in AI stocks hit shares of Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX (SPCX), its two public companies, which both fell more than 12% in the first two days of trading since mid-session. That decreased Musk’s net worth by $113 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, even though he remains by far the richest person on the planet. That two-day drop alone almost represents the net worth of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose assets stand at $123 billion.
Tesla and Musk fans loved the Cybertruck’s distinctive design. But its critics on social media thought otherwise, calling it “chic trash,” and the vehicle ultimately proved to be an underperformer.
At Tesla’s 2023 shareholder meeting, Musk said his “reasonable assumption” was that Tesla would make 500,000 Cybertrucks per year. Although Tesla has never broken out its Cybertruck sales separately, the company this year reported “other model” sales at fewer than 37,000 units. This metric applies to cars other than its best-selling Model 3 and Model Y, and includes sales of Tesla’s discontinued Model S and Model X.
Tesla has another automobile factory in the United States, in California. Musk stopped production of his two most expensive models, the Model S and Model X, at this factory to make way for production of the Optimus human robots, which the company intends to sell.
Musk has made it clear that Tesla’s future will be about offering rides in the company’s still-nascent robotaxi and humanoid robot service, not about selling electric vehicles. But these two ambitious projects have so far proven to be much more promising than real.
Musk said Tesla would soon make its Cybercab – a small vehicle that seats just two people and has no steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedal – in greater numbers than all of its other vehicles combined. He also promised that the company’s robotaxi service would offer fully autonomous rides in half the country by the end of last year.
However, the service is currently only available in seven cities – four in Texas and three in Florida – which falls behind competing services like Alphabet unit Waymo. Tesla has yet to disclose profits or revenue from the service in its quarterly report, suggesting it could be losing money. And getting regulatory approval from local governments to allow autonomous vehicles on the roads has proven difficult.
Humanoid robots are not yet available for sale. Musk said during a recent earnings conference call that Tesla was still working on some technologies, such as making robots’ hands work.
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