Elon Musk Kills the 'Best Product Tesla Has Ever Made' to Make Room for Robotaxis

The Funeral Notice Was Written by the Lead Engineer

Musk was vague about what "wind down" means. Wes Morrill, the Cybertruck's lead engineer, was not. He posted on X: "Cybertruck was an incredible technology development platform and lives on through Cybercab."

Read that again. A "technology development platform." That is what you call a vehicle when you can't say "flop" out loud. It's the corporate equivalent of telling a dying dog it's going to a farm.

Then a fan lamented the truck being "discontinued next year," calling it the best vehicle Tesla ever made. Musk replied with a single word: "true." No correction. No "we're just moving production." Just "true," followed by a reassurance that the existing fleet "will be around for a long time." Which is what you say about a product you've already buried.

Making Room for a Car Nobody Has Ridden In

The reason for the retreat is the Cybercab, Tesla's self-driving vehicle. Musk says the Cybertruck line has to go to make room for it.

So a real truck that real people bought is getting pushed aside for a robotaxi that exists mostly as a promise. Tesla has been telling us that full self-driving is right around the corner for roughly a decade. The corner keeps moving. Apparently it moves in a direction that requires dismantling the thing you can actually sell.

This is the Musk playbook in miniature. Declare the current thing the greatest achievement in human history. Then, the moment attention drifts, declare the next thing the greatest achievement in human history. The old thing gets a hashtag and a quiet burial.

From 146,000 Orders to a Quiet Exit

Remember the launch hype? Back in 2019, Musk said the Cybertruck had racked up 146,000 orders while it was still in development. The truck finally reached customers in 2023, after the delays, and sales have been disappointing ever since.

The gap between those two numbers is the whole story. A reservation costs almost nothing. A $61,000 truck is a different decision. By 2026 the "Cyberbeast" version runs $102,000. That is a lot of money for a vehicle that critics have called "ugly as sin."

Musk himself said in 2023 that Tesla needed to make it "at a price that people can afford." Then he built a six-figure stainless steel wedge. Affordable is in the eye of the beholder, I guess, especially when the beholder is worth hundreds of billions.

A Vehicle That Debuted by Shattering Its Own Windows

The Cybertruck's origin story is a perfect omen. At the 2019 reveal, Musk set out to prove the glass was practically unbreakable. It shattered. On stage. In front of the world.

Things did not improve from there. The recalls piled up, including one in 2025 covering more than 46,000 Cybertrucks over concerns that a piece of trim could fall off. Your futuristic armored truck was losing parts like a 1987 Yugo.

To be fair, it did attract true believers. Fans said it looked like something straight out of Blade Runner, and some are genuinely mourning it online. Fine. A cult following is real. It just isn't a truck market, and it turns out the people who want to look like they drive through a dystopia are a smaller group than the people who want to haul mulch.

The Passion Project Gets Dumped

This was always Musk's baby. He said in March that it was "way more awesome than people realise." In April, "best product Tesla has ever made to date." Those aren't the words of a man who was quietly planning an exit. They're the words of a man who changed his mind the moment the spreadsheet stopped flattering him.

That's the part worth sitting with. When Musk says something is the best thing he's ever built, there is apparently a shelf life, and it's measured in months. Anyone who bought into the superlatives, as a customer or as an investor, might want to remember that.