Elon Musk said Tesla will have to return deposits “for a lot of people” as it ends Cybertruck production in about eight months, and he argued the truck is not being killed because it is unprofitable, TechCrunch reported from his Nov. 9 posts on X. Electrek published the same remarks and challenged the demand claims with sales estimates.
Why it matters: Musk said “the order rate far exceeds our production rate,” and that “the opportunity cost of the complexity of Cybertruck is vastly outweighed by the value of incremental Cybercab production.” Tesla does not break out Cybertruck deliveries or margins in its financial reports, so those claims cannot be checked against a company figure.
TechCrunch, citing industry estimates, said about 71,000 Cybertrucks have been sold since deliveries began in November 2023, far below the 250,000 a year Musk once projected. It also noted that SpaceX, in its S-1, disclosed $131 million of Cybertruck purchases from Tesla in 2025. Electrek estimated that most of Tesla’s 8,295 “Other Models” deliveries in the third quarter were Cybertrucks, a pace of roughly 30,000 a year, and said Cox Automotive’s U.S. estimates showed a sharp drop from 14,416 trucks in the third quarter of 2024 to 3,519 in the first quarter of 2026.
Electrek argued that a last-call rush after Friday’s wind-down announcement is not the same as a long-running backlog, and that Tesla has already refunded some overseas deposits, including in Australia and New Zealand. Musk has also said Tesla will try to build as many trucks as it can, including with an extra shift, before the Giga Texas line comes down around June or July 2027.