Tesla will refund many Cybertruck deposits as orders outrun production, Musk says
Elon Musk says Tesla will have to refund deposits for many Cybertruck buyers because orders far exceed what it can build before the production line closes in about eight months.
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Tesla will have to hand back deposits to many Cybertruck reservation holders because orders far exceed what it can build before the line closes, Elon Musk said on Monday. "We will try to make as many as possible before shutting down the line in about 8 months, but will have to return deposits for a lot of people," Musk wrote on X.
The refunds follow Friday's announcement that Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at its Texas factory around mid-2027 and redirect the freed capacity to the Cybercab robotaxi. Musk said Tesla will add an extra production shift to fill as many outstanding orders as it can before the line is dismantled.
The pickup's sales never came close to Musk's early hopes. Tesla began deliveries in late 2023, but US sales fell 48 percent to 20,237 vehicles last year, according to Kelley Blue Book, far below his earlier projection of 250,000 a year. Tesla has also confirmed the Cybertruck will not be sold in Australia or New Zealand, refunding deposits there.
Reuters reported Musk's post on Monday, and the figures behind it check out against the record: the mid-2027 wind-down was announced by Musk on Friday, the extra shift was confirmed in the same thread, and the Kelley Blue Book sales figures match the company's reported US volumes. What remains unclear is how Tesla will decide which reservation holders get a truck and which get a refund. The company has published no schedule, no priority list and no method for choosing. The 100-dollar deposit was refundable from the start, so the refunds return money customers could already have reclaimed.
The Cybertruck was meant to prove Tesla could sell a radical pickup at scale; instead it is ending as a short-run vehicle whose order book will not be cleared. The Cybercab now takes the factory space, which ties Tesla's next chapter to its autonomous-driving bet rather than to a truck that never found its market. The open question is how many of the million-plus reservations Musk once claimed are still live, and how many of those customers will take the refund and walk away.