Tesla has written to Aussies and Kiwis who have reserved one of the company’s controversial Cybertruck utes to officially tell them the model won’t be coming down under because plans for a right-hand drive version have been axed.

“After careful consideration, plans to produce Cybertruck for Australia and New Zealand have been discontinued. As a result, we’re unable to fulfill your reservation and it will be cancelled,” read the email Tesla sent to affected customers on Friday morning. 

Cybertruck
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Tesla advised that a separate email will follow to confirm refund details, with money returned within 30 days for any payments made. The company offered a sweetener to make up for “any inconvenience caused”, but there’s a sting in the tail there.

Customers who made a reservation can get a free subscription to Tesla’s Full Self Driving (Supervised) technology if they order a new Model 3 or Model Y. The subscription is worth $149 per month, so the total saving on offer is $1788.

Tesla’s announcement will hardly come as a huge surprise to many, given Aussies who shelled out $150 for a deposit have been kept waiting for their vehicles since 2019, and the Australian web page for placing reservations was deactivated in 2022. 

The stainless-steel ute has been a lightning rod for controversy ever since it launched seven years ago, when it was pitched as a game-changing all-electric workhorse. As WhichCar by Wheels reported in May last year, more than 10,000 unsold units were stuck unsold at dealerships in America, representing nearly $800 million in inventory.

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Despite Elon Musk calling the Cybertruck Tesla’s “best product ever” at launch, and predicting annual production could hit 250,000 units, it was likened to Ford’s famously disastrous Edsel model in July this year.

Analysis by Bloomberg argued that, measured against projected sales targets, the Cybertruck had actually performed worse than the Edsel, which is estimated to have cost Ford around $350 million when it failed spectacularly after its launch in 1957.