Tesla Cybertruck winds down; 2025 U.S. sales fell 48%

By Priya Raman

Kelley Blue Book figures, as reported by Reuters, put Tesla’s U.S. Cybertruck sales at 20,237 in 2025, down 48% from 2024. Musk has confirmed on X that manufacturing at the Texas Gigafactory will scale back around mid-2027 to make room for more Cybercab robotaxis.

What is Tesla actually ending?

That is a production reallocation, not a formal cancellation. Musk has not said outright that Cybertruck production will end, and it remains unclear whether output could move elsewhere. Texas, however, is the only known factory equipped to build the truck’s specialised parts.

The production shift fits Tesla’s wider turn toward Cybercab, its two-seat autonomous taxi, and toward AI and robotics. The Cybertruck’s retreat therefore sits within a larger change of direction, rather than simply ending one body style.

What did the 2019 reveal promise?

When Musk unveiled the Cybertruck in 2019, he promised a revolution in pickup design. The production truck delivered angular stainless-steel bodywork, sharp edges, a comically oversized windscreen and one oversized, slow wiper. Different, certainly. Pickup coherence, less obvious.

The reaction came immediately from designers and the wider internet, and the launch supplied its own punch line. Chief designer Franz von Holzhausen struck the supposedly unbreakable windows with a metal ball; they shattered. For a truck marketed around toughness, the demonstration supplied the wrong evidence.

Creative Bloq editor Ian Dean put the test plainly: “Good product design has to do more than turn heads. It has to work, make sense for the people buying it, and survive the rather less glamorous reality of everyday use, whether it’s offroading or just driving to the shops without a bumper falling off.”

After the reveal came production delays, shifting specifications and a price that rose from the original promises. Musk once discussed selling 250,000 Cybertrucks a year. The comparison is imperfect: 250,000 was a stated ambition, 20,237 covers one country in one year, and neither identifies causes. The gap remains difficult to reconcile with Tesla’s early sales ambition.

Tesla wanted a vehicle unlike anything else on the road, and it achieved that. Its ambition, however, outran the practicalities of mass production. Early sketches showed a substantially different vehicle, while a later Creative Bloq piece imagined other cars adopting Cybertruck-like angularity. The production design moved away from its own drawings.

What broke beyond the styling?

The chronology matters because appearance was not the only failure.

• In June 2023, Creative Bloq reported leaked design and engineering flaws involving braking, handling, noise and water leaks.
• Later reports described body parts falling off and the off-road truck becoming stuck in mud.
• In April 2024, Creative Bloq rounded up six Cybertruck design failures, including a questionable logo and an accelerator-pedal recall.
• In March 2025, another report described exterior panels coming loose.

The account provides no failure rates, mileage exposure or test conditions for the loose bodywork, mud episode or leaked engineering issues. It cannot establish frequency or root cause, but it does show a widening gap between the toughness proposition and reported use.

The heavy, angular build also became a barrier in Europe, where the Cybertruck failed to meet pedestrian-safety requirements. The account names no regulation, test protocol or applicable version, so it does not support a criterion-by-criterion review. The exact compliance basis remains unstated.

The stainless-steel exterior added manufacturing and finishing headaches. Aggressive typography and the angular logo pushed the identity further into concept-car territory, compounding a silhouette that was already visually loud. Ferrari, Porsche and Mercedes built identities that communicate product and heritage without adding another layer of noise.

Can Cybercab avoid the same traps?

Tesla is repurposing the Texas factory to ramp Cybercab production while pushing deeper into AI and robotics. The report gives no Cybercab production target, launch date, regulatory status or safety evidence, so the proposed remedy remains unproven.

Dean also says the Cybercab has “its own rather silly design fail,” but does not identify it. Without a component, image or test result, that criticism cannot be evaluated; it also offers no evidence that Tesla has absorbed the Cybertruck’s design lessons.

The next test is whether Tesla can turn a two-seat autonomous-taxi concept into repeatable production without repeating the Cybertruck’s reported braking, handling, water-leak, loose-panel and pedestrian-safety problems, or its branding missteps. The evidence needed to judge that outcome has not yet appeared.