Tesla Extends Cybertruck Production Through Summer 2027

Tesla will keep building the Cybertruck through the end of summer 2027 — a five-day reversal of Elon Musk's own plan to kill the truck by mid-2027.

On Wednesday, Musk posted on X that production would be "extended through the end of summer 2027" so Tesla can work "through more of the Cybertruck order backlog."

The extension is a reprieve, not a revival. Just five days earlier, Musk said Tesla would chop the Cybertruck from its lineup around the middle of 2027 to free up assembly capacity for the Cybercab, the company's steering wheel-less robotaxi.

Why did Musk cancel the truck in the first place?

Musk said the Cybertruck was still profitable. The problem, he said, was manufacturing "complexity." The angular stainless-steel body apparently costs Tesla more hassle than it's worth on the line, even with positive margins on each unit sold.

The wind-down announcement also came with a costly caveat. Musk said Tesla would have to "return deposits for a lot of people" who had reserved trucks the company no longer plans to build.

That's a real liability. After the Cybertruck's November 2019 unveiling, Tesla said it collected more than 1 million reservations at $100 apiece — roughly $100 million in refundable deposits. Musk predicted at the time that Tesla would sell 150,000 to 250,000 Cybertrucks per year.

The takeaway: the truck made money per unit, but its manufacturing drag and Tesla's robotaxi pivot outweighed the margins.

How bad were the sales, really?

The numbers fall far short of Musk's forecast. Per Cox Automotive data shared with Business Insider, Tesla sold just 76,000 Cybertrucks over the past three years — against a stated annual target of 150,000 to 250,000.

Even that 76,000 figure carries an asterisk. It includes $131 million worth of Cybertruck sales in 2025 to SpaceX, another Musk-owned company, according to a Business Insider report from May 2026. Sales to a founder's affiliated company aren't quite the same as open-market demand.

The Cybertruck isn't alone in missing the mark. Like nearly every electric pickup that has hit the US market, it underperformed sales expectations — a segment-wide pattern that has hit rivals such as the Ford F-150 Lightning as well.

The takeaway: three years of cumulative sales barely reached half of Musk's single-year floor.

What happens between now and summer 2027?

The backlog gives Tesla a few more months of steady production at the Gigafactory in Texas, where the Cybercab is slated to absorb assembly capacity. Musk hasn't said how large the remaining backlog is, or how many deposits Tesla will ultimately refund once production stops for good.

For reservation holders still waiting, the math is getting tight. The extension runs only through end of summer 2027, and every truck Tesla builds from here on is one fewer deposit refund the company has to process.

The bottom line: the Cybertruck bought itself a few extra months, but the production line still has a firm expiration date.