Sometimes Tesla CEO Elon Musk chooses odd times to announce things—like the end of the Cybertruck.
During this brutal AI selloff, which has sent Tesla’s share price from more $400 to below $350 in the blink of an eye, Musk announced on X that the Cybertruck is going away.
The oddly shaped, large stainless steel gray pickup truck that Musk suggested in 2021 would be Tesla’s “best product ever,” never lived up to expectations. Winding down Cybertruck production represents a product failure for the EV maker, and it’s another sign the company is doubling down on AI.
“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,” tweeted Musk on Friday morning.
That should be it for the truck. It’s only made in Texas. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment about the announcement.
Cybertruck was unveiled in November 2019. Tesla started delivering it four years later after amassing hundreds of thousands of orders, which gave Tesla confidence it could sell 250,000 trucks annually.
It didn’t. Through September, Tesla sold fewer than 100,000 in the U.S., teaching Tesla a lesson other EV start-ups learned: Preorders aren’t sales.
It’s hard to explain how bad the sales number is. Car companies invest billions in new car platforms that typically need to sell 200,000-plus annually to justify their existence. Cybertruck just never reached those heights. Tesla, instead, chose to leave it as a low-volume, high-end halo vehicle. (In the car business, halo vehicles are essentially brand management tools.)
Barclays analyst Dan Levy wrote Friday that along with Cybercab production, “limited commercial success… with potentially limited [profit] margins” were reasons to kill off the truck.
Peak Cybertruck was probably in late 2024, when the vehicle was outselling other all-electric trucks from Ford Motor and General Motors —giving Cybertruck more than a 50% share. But sales stopped growing.
Tesla sold 20,237 in the U.S. in 2025, down 48% year over year. (And Musk’s SpaceX was a large buyer of Cybertrucks last year.) Through September, Cybertruck sales were down another 38% year over year.
Now Tesla is focused on Cybercab, the company’s purpose-built, AI-trained robo-taxi without pedals or a steering wheel.
Tesla launched a robo-taxi service in Austin, Texas, in June 2025. Expansion has been slow. It introduced the Cybercab into its robo-taxi network earlier this year.
Musk is all-in on self-driving technology, believing that low-cost driverless cars will fundamentally alter personal transportation. He also believes Tesla has leading self-driving hardware and software.
“I think unless we are stopped by governments, which is certainly a possibility, if they’re trying to protect a domestic industry, I think Tesla will end up doing a majority of all passenger miles on Earth in any country where it is allowed to operate freely,” said Musk on Tesla’s third-quarter earnings conference call. “And you can come back and look at this prediction, but I feel confident about this prediction.”
Investors hope that prediction works out better than his truck forecast.
Tesla stock closed up 4.2% at $358.22 on Friday; the S&P 500 rose 0.3%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.5%.
Cybertruck didn’t have anything to do with the move. Instead, the market is still digesting what a Democratic midterm sweep means for AI growth. Investors are nervous. The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.5% on Thursday. It rose 1.1% on Friday. Tesla stock ended the week down 10.4%.
Maybe Musk’s Cybertruck announcement was well timed. Everyone has other things on their minds.