Musk described the change as part of a wider push to center Tesla on AI, robotics and autonomous vehicles. Plans call for building up to 125,000 autonomous cabs a year. The Cybercab is a two-seater with no steering wheel or pedals. Tesla began offering paid Cybercab rides in Austin in September, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an audit of the vehicle's safety certification. Cybercabs under test in Austin have run for two months without serious incidents. Tesla's robotaxi service is still limited to seven cities in Texas and Florida.

Cybertruck production began at Gigafactory Texas at the end of 2023, and customer deliveries started on November 30 of that year. Tesla unveiled the truck on November 21, 2019, when two windows cracked during a strength demonstration on stage. The company said it had 250,000 preorders within five days. Sales never approached that level. Estimates put total sales at about 70,000 to 71,000 over three years, against Musk's earlier projections of 250,000 to 500,000 a year. The Kelley Blue Book figures show 20,237 U.S. sales last year, down 48% from 38,965 in 2024. SpaceX bought $131 million worth of Cybertrucks from Tesla in 2025.

The truck's price also drifted from its starting target. The original figure was about $40,000. A base model now starts near $60,000, and the top Cyberbeast trim is listed at $102,490. Tesla lowered Cybertruck prices shortly before the announcement. The vehicle has had 11 recalls since launch, including for braking and trim defects, and it has been involved in several post-crash fires. Safety experts have argued that its angular design would not clear European pedestrian-impact rules.

"It doesn't make sense to keep it going when it's not meeting its targets," said Andy Palmer, a former Aston Martin chief executive. The Cybertruck is the third recent Tesla model to be discontinued. The Model S and Model X were dropped earlier, and the Fremont, California, plant was repurposed to build Optimus humanoid robots, which remain unsold because of technical challenges.

The announcement came in a bad week for Musk's finances. His companies lost more than $370 billion in market value over the week. Tesla stock fell more than 12% in a single day, and estimates of the drop in his net worth range from about $80 billion to $113 billion, depending on the account. That decline is tied to a sell-off in AI stocks and to Tuesday's U.S. midterm elections, in which the vast majority of the Republican candidates Musk backed with nearly half a billion dollars in political spending lost.