Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the electric vehicle manufacturer would have to return some deposits customers made for Cybertrucks as the company winds down production of the divisive electric truck, after previously claiming the company was facing a backlog of orders.
Key Facts
In a post on X early on Monday morning, Musk said orders for Cybertrucks exceeded the company’s production rate for the vehicle.
The billionaire CEO said Tesla would try to “make as many as possible” before shutting down production, but also conceded the company would be forced to return deposits placed by “a lot of people.”
Musk claimed the decision to end Cybertruck production was made not because the vehicle was unprofitable, although sales for the vehicle have been declining, according to data from Kelley Blue Book.
Instead, Musk said the company needed to ramp up production of its Cybercab autonomous vehicles, noting on Monday morning “the opportunity cost of the complexity of Cybertruck is vastly outweighed by the value of incremental Cybercab production.”
Over the weekend, the Tesla CEO said the company was working through a backlog for Cybertrucks orders, which he claimed was “far more than we can make before dismantling the line for Cybercab expansion around June/July next year.”
Key Background
Despite Musk’s insistence that the Cybertruck is not unprofitable, analysts have reported declining sales for the electric truck since it was first introduced. Cybertruck sales declined 48% in 2025 compared to 2024, according to data from Kelley Blue Book and Cox Automotive. The company sold only 20,237 units that year, down from 38,965 the year before. Sales numbers in 2026 are even weaker, with Kelley Blue Book and Cox Automotive estimating just 11,586 vehicles sold in 2026 as of the third quarter—down 28% from the year before at this time. This is far behind Musk’s early predictions for the truck. At a shareholder meeting in 2023, Musk said the company would ramp up Cybertruck production and predicted it would begin manufacturing hundreds of thousands of vehicles. “A quarter million a year is a reasonable guess, and it might be 500,000, I don’t know,” Musk said. “But we’ll make as many as people want and can afford.”
Forbes Valuation
We estimate Musk’s net worth at $849.7 billion, making him the wealthiest person in the world. He was briefly the first person in history to be worth over $1 trillion after SpaceX went public in June through an IPO.
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