Tesla reduced Cybertruck production and trimmed its teams by more than half, according to a Business Insider report published on Thursday. Since January, the company has been reallocating staff to Model Y production lines instead.
The report cited factory workers who said that production guidances in Tesla‘s Gigafactory in Texas were changed in the past few months, with one of them stating that “it feels a lot like they’re filtering people out.”
The production shift follows similar moves made late last year by the company when it notified staff that it would change Cybertruck production schedules — they were told the company planned to scale back production targets for the electric pickup truck for the first quarter of 2025.
Production Recall
“Cybertruck is apocalypse-level safe,” Elon Musk stated in a social media post last February after the model received a 5-star rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
In mid-March, however, the NHTSA recalled nearly all the Cybertruck units Tesla delivered in the U.S. due to a problem on the exterior panel. The recall affected over 46,000 vehicles built from November 2023 through February 27.
Data compiled by long-time Tesla tracker Troy Teslike showed that Cybertruck output at the Texas plant reached recently “its lowest in the last four quarters”.
Although it was the eighth recall for the SUV since January 2024, data from Cox Automotive showed that the model ranked as the fifth best-selling electric vehicle in the United States last year.
Sales
Tesla opened orders for the Cybertruck in August last year, with deliveries beginning in November 2023 in the U.S., four years after the vehicle’s unveiling in Los Angeles.
According to Cox Automotive, Tesla sold 6,406 Cybertrucks in the first quarter of 2025, a 128% increase from the same period last year, when production was just beginning.
However, the figures are less than half of what the brand sold in the third and fourth quarters of 2024, with 14,416 and 12,991 units delivered respectively, as the model’s production ramped up.
Before the vehicle’s production launch in late 2023, Elon Musk forecasted that Cybertruck annual sales could reach 250,000 units, but Tesla delivered only around 39,000 units in 2024.
Earlier in April, the brand announced a new variant of the Cybertruck in the U.S., priced from $69,990. The new Cybertruck long-range variant is the cheapest among the three models it currently has in the U.S., Tesla’s website shows.
