Tesla Drops Right-Hand-Drive Cybertruck in Australia and NZ

Tesla has quietly scrapped plans to build a right-hand-drive Cybertruck for Australia and New Zealand, informing reservation holders by email that their orders will be cancelled and refunded. "After careful consideration, plans to produce Cybertruck for Australia and New Zealand have been discontinued," the message said. "As a result, we’re unable to fulfil your reservation and it will be cancelled."

The move affects customers who in some cases have held deposits since the vehicle’s 2019 unveiling. Tesla closed the Australian reservation page in 2022, but refunds are only now being issued to those who remained in line.

The cancellation is the latest sign of trouble for a model that arrived amid sky-high expectations. Elon Musk touted production targets as large as 250,000 units per year after the 2019 reveal, and reservations topped one million. Deliveries began at the end of 2023, but buyer enthusiasm faded quickly. Reservation cancellations rose and deliveries fell; Tesla sold fewer than 30,000 Cybertrucks in 2024 and later years, a total that counts trucks Musk purchased for his companies.

Earlier attempts to broaden demand and cut costs yielded mixed results. Tesla expanded the Cybertruck’s market footprint to include Mexico, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Israel as well as the US, Canada and Mexico. It also tried trimming features and changing configurations. A rear-wheel-drive Cybertruck appeared briefly as a lower-priced option but failed to attract buyers. The all-wheel-drive Standard initially priced at $59,990 was relisted as a stronger contender, only for Tesla to raise that price to $69,990 ten days later and again to $74,990 in August.

Price moves did not reverse the product’s financial trajectory. With numerous advanced components and limited volume, the Cybertruck program incurred heavy losses. Tesla reported just 8,295 deliveries in the Q3 2026 category labeled "Other Models," a figure that includes the Cybertruck alongside the Cybercab and Semi. That number stands in stark contrast to the Cybertruck line’s theoretical annual capacity of 125,000 units and underlines how small actual shipments have been.

A familiar playbook

Dropping the right-hand-drive variant follows a precedent Tesla set in 2023 when it declined to build refreshed right-hand-drive versions of the Model S and Model X. Tesla attempted to sell left-hand-drive versions in some right-hand-drive markets with limited success, and the company later retired those models in several markets.

For the Cybertruck, the calculus is straightforward: producing a separate right-hand-drive engineering package for Australia and New Zealand would have added cost to a low-volume product. Australia and New Zealand were the only confirmed right-hand-drive markets for the Cybertruck; adding the UK would not necessarily have improved the business case enough to justify the investment, Tesla appears to have concluded.

The truck’s polarising styling and specifications have remained sticking points with buyers even as Tesla pushed the vehicle into additional markets. With shipment volumes constrained and program losses mounting, the cancellation of right-hand-drive production is a concrete step that reduces near-term exposure for Tesla’s pickup program.

Reservation holders in Australia and New Zealand have now been told their orders will be cancelled and refunded. "After careful consideration, plans to produce Cybertruck for Australia and New Zealand have been discontinued," the company wrote in the notification email.