Tesla will end production of the Cybertruck in its Texas Gigafactory next year.
This is a particularly toxic electric vehicle, between its divisive design and Elon Musk’s support for you. This toxicity has certainly contributed to below-average sales, as well as a number of recalls.
But the end of the Cybertruck is also another sign that the era of large electric vehicles, especially large trucks, is waning. This is great news for the safety of pedestrians and motorcyclists, but also for the battery supply chain, at a time when more people need to get behind electric wheels.
The Cybertruck uses a massive 123 kilowatt-hour battery that weighs about 1,600 pounds, or about a quarter of the vehicle’s weight. That’s comparable to the battery that powered Ford’s F-150 Lightning, another electric truck that was canceled late last year. (The company also phased out a three-row electric vehicle in 2024.) Ford’s giant batteries ranged from 98 kilowatt hours to 131 kilowatt hours.
Seeing both trucks canceled within a year of each other, while automakers have announced a slew of smaller electric vehicles and gasoline-powered cars with range-extending electric motors, indicates that a shift may be coming. Ford plans to launch the Fathom next year. The sub-$30,000 electric pickup is expected to be about the size of the automaker’s gas-powered Maverick compact pickup. Although Ford hasn’t announced the battery sizes available in different versions, it’s a safe bet that they won’t be anywhere near the size of the F-150 Lightning or Cybertruck. The company also plans to relaunch the Lightning as an extended range model.
Startup Slate is also launching a small electric pickup that can be converted into an SUV, with a simple base model starting at less than $25,000. It also has a svelte battery and has seen a massive surge in pre-orders – although, to be fair, so has the Cybertruck, and we’ve seen how that turned out.
Then there’s the Rivian R2, launched this year. While the SUV isn’t as small or inexpensive as Ford and Slate vehicles (its battery pack has a capacity of 88 kilowatt hours and weighs about 1,200 pounds), it’s still smaller than the company’s flagship R1S. Rivian also teased the R3, an even lighter SUV, in the coming years.
This doesn’t mean large electric vehicles are dead. The Kia EV9, for example, is among the 10 best-selling electric vehicles in the United States, as is the R1S. There’s also a scorching resale market for the F-150 Lightning. But the rest of the top 10 best-selling new electric vehicles are all mid-size crossovers, sedans or SUVs with mid-size batteries, and a number of recently announced electric vehicles tend to be smaller or operate as extended-range vehicles.
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