Tesla to return some Cybertruck deposits as production winds down, Musk says

Tesla will return Cybertruck deposits to “a lot of people” whose orders it cannot fill before it stops building the steel-clad pickup in about eight months, Chief Executive Elon Musk said Monday in a post on X.

Musk said last week that Tesla would end Cybertruck production at its Texas factory by mid-2027 to make room for more Cybercab robotaxis. On Monday he said orders far exceed output and rejected claims that the truck was unprofitable. The “opportunity cost of the complexity of Cybertruck is vastly outweighed by the value of incremental Cybercab production,” he wrote.

On Saturday, Musk wrote that the truck would stay in production for another eight to nine months before Tesla turned to scaling the robotaxi. He said the company would try to build as many as possible before the line shuts.

Reservations never translated into sales on the scale Musk predicted. Tesla unveiled the Cybertruck in 2019 with a promised starting price under $40,000, and the first trucks reached buyers in late 2023. Musk said reservations had reached 1 million and forecast annual sales of around 250,000. Tesla does not report Cybertruck sales separately, but industry experts estimate about 71,000 have been sold since deliveries began in November 2023, TechCrunch reported.

SpaceX bought $131 million worth of Cybertrucks from Tesla in 2025, according to the registration statement it filed ahead of its initial public offering.

Dan Ives, senior managing director of Yorkville Ives & Co., told CBS News that the truck’s high price and low demand had pointed to this outcome, and that ending production frees Musk to focus on robotics and robotaxis.

Musk said last week that Tesla plans to use the freed-up factory space to build more two-seat Cybercabs. TechCrunch noted that sales could get a final bump as production ends, though even a scarcity boost is unlikely to approach the projections Musk made several years ago.