Tesla will add a Cybertruck shift, then dismantle the Texas line

Elon Musk said on Saturday that Tesla will add an extra production shift on the Cybertruck, because the order book is larger than the factory can clear before the line is pulled out.

"The Tesla Cybertruck order backlog is currently far more than we can make before dismantling the line for Cybercab expansion around June/July next year," he wrote on X. "We will add an extra shift to try to get all orders done in time."

The date is new. On Friday he said Tesla would wind down Cybertruck production at Gigafactory Texas "around the middle of next year to make room for increased Cybercab production." Saturday's post narrowed that window to roughly June or July 2027 and added a plan for the people still waiting: more labour, not more time on the calendar.

He did not say how large the backlog is, when the extra shift starts, or how many extra trucks it would add. He also did not promise that every open order will be built. "Try to get all orders done in time" is an attempt, not a guarantee.

A few hours earlier on Saturday, answering a driver who had been consoling Cybertruck owners, Musk wrote: "We are still building Cybertruck for another 8 or 9 months btw, but then Tesla needs to focus on scaling Cybercab. There will never be another vehicle like it." Eight or nine months from early November would land in July or August 2027, a slightly later window than the June/July dismantling date in the later post. He did not reconcile the two.

Gigafactory Texas, outside Austin, is the only Tesla plant known to be equipped to make the truck's specialised stainless-steel parts. Reuters noted that it is not yet clear whether production would move somewhere else or stop entirely once that line is dismantled.

Sales and backlog are not the same number. Kelley Blue Book's estimates, as reported by ABC News, put US Cybertruck sales at 20,237 in 2025, down 48 percent from 38,965 in 2024. That is a long way from the 250,000 trucks a year Musk once predicted. Those figures measure past retail sales, not unpaid orders sitting in Tesla's system today, and Musk did not publish an order count.

Tesla began delivering the Cybertruck in late 2023, four years after an unveiling still remembered for the "unbreakable" windows that cracked on stage. According to ABC News, citing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the truck has been the subject of 11 recalls since it went on sale, some fixed in a shop and some by software.

What takes its place on the floor is Cybercab, Tesla's two-seat robotaxi, built without a steering wheel, pedals or mirrors. Tesla began offering paid rides in a small Cybercab fleet in Austin in September. ABC News, citing Texas's Department of Motor Vehicles, said about 570 of more than 1,200 Tesla robotaxis operating in the state are Cybercabs, with the rest mainly Model Y vehicles. In September the safety agency also opened an audit of whether Tesla had properly self-certified the Cybercab against federal motor-vehicle standards.

Musk's own explanation is about people and floor space, not a eulogy. In a separate post on Saturday he said efficiency improvements "will allow for a 40kWh Cybercab pack. We will make this in liquid silver, so the colors are not too monotonous." Then the point: "The biggest thing most people fail to understand is that there are a very limited number of smart, dedicated people! They can only do so many things. If we have to maintain a complex production line, supply chain and allocate engineering for Cybertruck, we can't use those people or factory space and machinery for scaling Cybercab, which is the vehicle that will PROFOUNDLY transform the world of terrestrial transport!"

Wes Morrill, who led engineering on the truck, struck a similar note. "Cybertruck was an incredible technology development platform and lives on through Cybercab," he wrote. Musk reposted it.

A Cybertruck owner called the news the end of an era and "the best vehicle Tesla has ever made." Musk's reply was shorter: "True, but the Cybertruck fleet will be around for a long time."

The trucks already built are not going anywhere. The line that makes them has a date.

*Image: A Foundation Series Cybertruck at dusk in San Jose, California. Photo: Dllu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.*

Source: Reuters