Tesla Cybertruck cancelled for Australia, deposits to be refunded

The Tesla Cybertruck electric pickup won't be coming to Australia or New Zealand, with the automaker telling local deposit holders today their money would be refunded.

A letter sent to customers earlier today, widely shared across social media, confirmed the controversial pickup wouldn't be heading Down Under.

“After careful consideration, plans to produce Cybertruck for Australia and New Zealand have been discontinued,” the letter said.

“To thank you for your early support, we’d like to offer you a complimentary one-year FSD (Full Self Driving Supervised) subscription when you order a new Tesla Model 3 or Model Y.”

FSD (Supervised) is currently priced at $149 per month, making the offer of a 12-month subscription worth $1788.

While Tesla Australia hasn't provided any further official comment, the Cybertruck has been removed from its public-facing website.

The Cybertruck is manufactured only in left-hand drive and isn't currently offered in any right-hand-drive market.

It was revealed in the US in late 2019, with Tesla Australia taking $150 deposits from interested buyers in November that year.

In May 2022, the reservation portal on the Australian website was closed and replaced with a ‘Get updates’ button. Reservations never reopened.

“We have more orders of the first Cybertrucks than we could possibly fulfil for three years after the start of production,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the Financial Times Future of the Car conference held in May 2022.

The manufacturer’s local arm apparently hadn’t given up, importing a Cybertruck in 2024 and producing imagery of the vehicle at landmarks including Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

Tesla displayed it at public events and showrooms around the country during a national publicity tour.

At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in 2024, Mr Musk suggested production for markets beyond North America remained a possibility.

“We might be able to certify it [Cybertruck] for other markets sometime next year [2025], but this year it’s just North America,” the Tesla boss said.

“We did design the car to North American requirements, because if you start going with the superset of international requirements, it forces a lot of constraints on the Cybertruck that would make the product frankly worse.

“I think we’ll need to make a special version that is, for example, China compliant or Europe compliant, but that doesn’t really make sense to add that complexity until we’ve achieved higher volume production on Cybertruck.”

The Cybertruck has fallen short of Mr Musk’s sales ambitions since US customer deliveries began in late 2023. He had predicted annual sales of 250,000, suggesting they could even reach 500,000.

Its best US sales year was 2024, with an estimated 38,965 Cybertrucks sold, according to Cox Automotive/Kelley Blue Book. That dropped to 20,237 in 2025.

Despite a significant price cut in February, the slump continued into 2026, with an estimated 11,586 sold between January and September, a year-on-year decline of 28 per cent.

The Cybertruck’s future remains uncertain, with Mr Musk suggesting in January 2026 that it could become an autonomous cargo carrier.

The news follows the December 2025 global cancellation of one of the Cybertruck’s main rivals, the Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup, which was unveiled in the US in 2021.

Ford Australia didn't offer the F-150 Lightning. However, AUSEV imported 146 examples before Ford ended production, with the local project collapsing in March 2026 as supply dried up.

The unsold right-hand drive F-150 Lightnings were subsequently offered through easyauto123, owned by Australia’s biggest automotive dealer group, Eagers.

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