Tesla CEO Elon Musk is defending the Cybertruck and the company’s decision to stop producing the polarizing steel-clad truck, claiming that the order rate far exceeds its production.

Tesla will shut down production of the Cybertruck in about eight months Musk said in an X post on Monday. He also said the company will try to make as many of the vehicles as possible before then, though Tesla will “have to return deposits for a lot of people.”

Musk argued the Cybertruck was not unprofitable, and that Tesla was ending production because the “opportunity cost of the complexity of Cybertruck is vastly outweighed by the value of incremental Cybercab production.”

In other words, Musk is arguing that Tesla can make more money by using the factory space and resources dedicated to the Cybertruck for building Cybercab robotaxis. Musk said last week that Tesla plans to use the factory space to build more two-seater Cybercabs.

The first Cybertrucks were delivered to customers in late 2023, when it seemed like it could be a breakthrough hit for the company. Reservations for the vehicle had ballooned to 1 million, according to Musk, who also predicted that the company would sell around 250,000 of the trucks annually.

But those reservations never translated into actual sales. Tesla doesn’t break out sales of the Cybertrucks, but industry experts estimate a total of about 71,000 Cybertrucks have been sold since the first deliveries began in November 2023.

Many of those sales came from inside Musk’s ecosystem of other businesses.

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