Seven Years of Waiting End as Tesla Scraps Cybertruck for Right-Hand Drive Markets

For nearly seven years, customers in Australia and New Zealand held onto a promise that an electric pickup truck would soon arrive on their roads. That promise has now been officially broken. Tesla has canceled the Cybertruck for these two markets, sending out emails today to inform reservation holders that their orders are void and their initial deposits will be returned. This decision marks the end of a long wait that began in November 2019, when Australians started paying A$150 to secure a spot in line for the vehicle.

The core issue is a mismatch between the vehicle’s design and the local infrastructure requirements. The Cybertruck is manufactured exclusively in a left-hand-drive configuration. However, Australia and New Zealand, along with other regions like the UK and Japan, require right-hand-drive vehicles for their road systems. Additionally, Australia has its own specific design certification rules that the truck must meet. Re-engineering a vehicle for right-hand drive is an expensive undertaking, and Tesla appears to have decided that the cost does not justify the potential market size.

Financial data suggests that the Cybertruck’s current demand levels do not support the investment required for a new production variant. In the third quarter of 2026, Tesla delivered only 8,295 units in the 'Other Models' category, a figure that now largely represents Cybertruck sales since production of the Model S and Model X has ended. Estimates place quarterly Cybertruck sales between 7,000 and 8,000 units, translating to an annual pace of roughly 30,000 vehicles. This is significantly lower than the production line’s capacity of 250,000 units per year, making a costly redesign for two markets with a combined population of about 33 million people financially difficult to defend.

This cancellation comes just one day after Tesla released its third-quarter 2026 earnings report, highlighting the timing of the decision. While Tesla did not provide specific regional reservation numbers, crowdsourced tracking in 2020 suggested that Australia was the third-largest market for reservations behind the US and Canada, accounting for approximately 3% of the global total. By 2023, global reservations had reached around 2 million. Despite this interest, Tesla quietly closed the Australian reservation page in May 2022, replacing it with a simple 'Get updates' button, leaving thousands of customers in limbo without a refund for four years.

The situation was further complicated by public statements from CEO Elon Musk. In 2024, following a display tour of the truck in Australia, Musk told shareholders that the company might certify the vehicle for other markets 'sometime next year.' However, that 'next year' passed without a right-hand-drive version appearing. The truck has only launched in left-hand-drive markets, including South Korea, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Israel. It remains blocked from the European Union primarily due to pedestrian safety concerns.

To soften the blow for those who had reserved the truck, Tesla is offering a concession: a free one-year subscription to Full Self-Driving (Supervised) for customers who switch their reservation to a new Model 3 or Model Y. This strategy aims to convert the canceled pickup truck orders into sales of vehicles that are already built for right-hand-drive markets. Refunds for the original deposits will be processed within 30 days, officially closing the chapter on the Cybertruck’s presence in the region.

The decision underscores a shift in the vehicle’s identity. Once a global launch candidate, the Cybertruck is increasingly becoming a niche, predominantly American product. With US sales dropping from approximately 39,000 units in 2024 to a much lower fraction today, Tesla is likely to focus its resources on existing left-hand-drive inventory rather than expanding the model’s global footprint. For the Australian and New Zealand markets, the era of waiting for the electric pickup has ended.