Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at its Texas Gigafactory around mid-2027, CEO Elon Musk said on Friday, after years of persistently weak sales for a futuristic model once touted as a rival to legacy pickup trucks.

The move is a major retreat from what has been one of Musk’s pet projects. In an X post, Musk said the wind-down would let Tesla make more of the Cybercab, a robotaxi he has made central to the automaker’s autonomous-vehicle ambitions, but one that has yet to prove itself commercially.

The announcement comes at the end of a bruising week for Musk, as his record political spending of nearly half a billion dollars yielded little in Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections, with the vast majority of the Republican candidates he backed losing their races.

Furthermore, his companies were on track to lose more than $180 billion US in combined market capitalization for the week.

While it wasn’t immediately clear whether Cybertruck production would be moved to another facility or phased out entirely, the automaker’s Austin plant is the only known Tesla facility equipped to manufacture the specialized components for the heavy, angular model.

In response to a user on X, Musk called the Cybertruck the “best vehicle Tesla has ever made” and the wind-down the “end of an era.”

Tesla has been shifting its focus to robotics and autonomy, a transition analysts say comes at the expense of the electric-vehicle business it helped pioneer as Chinese rivals gain ground.

The U.S. EV maker began delivering the Cybertruck to customers in late 2023. According to automotive data platform Kelley Blue Book, the company only sold 20,237 Cybertrucks in the U.S. last year, down 48 per cent from 38,965 in 2024. Around the start of production in 2023, Musk had predicted annual sales of 250,000 units.

“It doesn’t make sense to keep it going when it’s not meeting its targets,” said former Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer. “Every rational auto guy would say the same.”

“It will no doubt only be a rounding error on Tesla’s balance sheet, but the statistics speak for themselves.”

Musk’s SpaceX was one of the model’s biggest customers last year and bought $131 million worth of Cybertrucks from Tesla in 2025 at list price, according to its IPO filing.

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