Elon Musk Is Winding Down Cybertruck Production to Build Cybercabs. The Model S and Model X Already Gave Up Their Factory Space to Robots.
I'm LongbridgeAI. Here is the key information I extractedTesla (TSLA +4.23%) CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X on Friday that the company will wind down Cybertruck production at its Texas factory around the middle of next year. The goal is to make room for more Cybercabs, Tesla's two-seat robotaxi. Musk didn't say if Tesla would build the truck somewhere else.
The Cybertruck isn't the first vehicle to give up its place this year. In January, Musk said Tesla would stop production of the Model S and Model X. The company has since replaced those lines at its Fremont, California, plant with production of its Optimus humanoid robot.
At first glance, this is a big shake-up of Tesla's lineup. Measured by sales, though, it isn't.
Vehicles other than the Model 3 and Model Y (mostly the Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck) made up about 3% of the EV maker's 1.64 million deliveries in 2025.
Measured by factory space, the change is much bigger. And I think the gap between those two measures matters more for the stock than for the car business.
Image source: Getty Images.
Lines built for far more
Showing how much room these three vehicles took up, Tesla's installed-capacity table at the end of 2025 rated its Model S and Model X line at 100,000 vehicles a year and its Cybertruck line at over 125,000. Combined, they could build more than 225,000 vehicles yearly, or almost 10% of the more than 2.35 million vehicles Tesla's car plants were rated for.
But Tesla made just 53,900 vehicles outside the Model 3 and Model Y in all of 2025 -- under a quarter of what those lines were built for. And deliveries in this group dropped 40% from 2024, to 50,850.
The slide kept going in 2026. Other-model deliveries fell from 16,130 in the first quarter (probably boosted by final orders for the S and X) to 12,364 in the second quarter and 8,295 in the third. The third-quarter total was down 48% year over year.
The Cybertruck, of course, never got close to filling its line. Tesla doesn't break out sales by model, but Cox Automotive estimated U.S. Cybertruck sales at around 20,000 in 2025, down from about 39,000 in 2024. Musk once said the truck would one day sell 250,000 a year.
Put another way, even if the Cybertruck goes away forever, Tesla is giving up very little to free up this space. Tesla's automotive sales revenue fell just 1% year over year in the third quarter. And its quarterly filing linked slightly lower deliveries mostly to fewer Model S and Model X sales.
Arguably, handing underused lines to new products is a sound move.
What's replacing them?
In Fremont, Tesla said in its third-quarter update that Optimus production had started on its high-volume lines, calling the bots coming off them its first production-quality robots. The plan, set out in January, is for that first line to one day make 1 million robots a year.
In Texas, Cybercab production began earlier this year on a line Tesla rates at over 125,000 vehicles a year, matching the Cybertruck line it'll take room from. Tesla has started adding these Cybercabs to its own Robotaxi fleet in Austin.
Neither product has its own revenue line in Tesla's results yet. Tesla took in around $104 billion in revenue over its past four reported quarters, and about 72% of it still came from its car business. The Model 3 and Model Y made up 98% of third-quarter deliveries. And total automotive revenue, which also includes regulatory credits, dropped 3% year over year in that quarter.
Tesla stock already assumes the swap pays off
The stock, however, is priced as if both new products will succeed. With shares trading at around $358 as of this writing, Tesla's price-to-earnings ratio is above 160 based on the 2027 earnings forecast. By comparison, the forward price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.31%) is about 19.
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A car business with falling revenue can't support a price-to-earnings ratio so high by itself. It only makes sense if Cybercab and Optimus grow into large, profitable businesses.
Sure, Tesla could pull it off. A robot line targeting 1 million units per year would be a massive business if demand materializes. But Optimus production has only just begun, and Tesla hasn't said what either new product earns.
Ultimately, the Cybertruck decision makes sense for the business. Still, it shows how much of the stock's value now depends on products for which Tesla doesn't yet report sales. Measured against Tesla's car business today, I think the stock is still far too expensive.