Cybertruck, the pricey, gargantuan, angular, steel-plated pickup darling of Elon Musk‘s, never sold very well. And now, Tesla appears to be ready to accept that fact.
On Friday, CEO Musk said on X that the company will be “winding down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of next year to make room for increased Cybercab production.”
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Musk didn’t say whether the Cybertruck production will move somewhere else, and he didn’t explicitly say it’s the end of the road for Tesla’s pickup. But the clues are pretty clear. First of all, the Cybertruck is exclusively produced at Gigafactory Texas. If the company doesn’t relocate somewhere else, which is unlikely given that the Cybertruck has a stainless steel body that presents unique manufacturing demands, then the Cybertruck has less than a year left.
Add to that the fact that Tesla recently canceled the Cybertruck launch in Australia and New Zealand, as well as continuous reports of poor sales ever since the Cybertruck went on sale in 2023, and it’s pretty obvious that Tesla is giving up on the pickup.
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The move also lines up with Musk’s recent total focus on self-driving. When the company unveiled the new Tesla Roadster in October, he said it would be the last manually driven car that Tesla will ever produce.
It is no wonder, then, that the manufacturing capacities used for the Cybertruck will be repurposed for the Cybercab, Tesla’s autonomous taxi car.
As for customers looking for a manually driven electric pickup, the choice is actually improving. Slate recently launched an affordable electric pickup, Ford is working on its own cheap electric pickup called Fathom, and Rivian is launching its mid-size pickup, the Rivian R2T, next year.
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