Elon Musk wants to clear something up about the Cybertruck: Tesla isn’t ending it because it loses money. “This is not a case of Cybertruck being unprofitable, as has been misreported by legacy media,” Musk wrote on X.
Instead, he said the opportunity cost of the Cybertruck’s complexity “is vastly outweighed by the value of incremental Cybercab production.”
More Orders Than Tesla Can Build
Musk also said that “the Cybertruck order rate far exceeds our production rate.” Tesla will build as many trucks as it can before the line shuts down in about eight months, but it “will have to return deposits for a lot of people.”
When X user Owen Sparks (@OwenSparks) asked why Tesla doesn’t just build more factory space, Musk replied that building a high-volume factory is extremely difficult, adding that “prototypes are trivial by comparison.”
Earlier, he explained that Tesla has a limited number of skilled engineers, and keeping the Cybertruck going means tying up people, factory space, and equipment that could be scaling Cybercab production instead.
Building factories is hard, but Tesla has done it before. It’s built plants in California, Nevada, Texas, Shanghai, and Berlin. The bigger issue is likely whether a new factory or a separate line would be worth it for a low-volume vehicle like the Cybertruck.
Not a Tesla App
Sales Tell Part of the Story
Even if there’s a backlog now, Cybertruck sales haven’t been strong. Tesla doesn’t break out Cybertruck numbers, but in Q3 2026, it delivered just 8,295 vehicles in its “Other Models” category, compared to 478,237 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. That category now covers the Cybertruck, the Semi, and any leftover Model S and Model X inventory, and it was down 48% from 15,933 a year earlier.
Much of today’s backlog likely comes from Dual Motor AWD buyers who ordered the truck at $59,990 back in February, before Tesla raised the price.
So the Cybertruck may be profitable, but at roughly a few thousand units per quarter, it isn’t worth the factory space Tesla wants for the Cybercab, which Tesla is betting can be built far faster and in much larger numbers. Existing Cybertruck owners will still get parts and service after production ends. For anyone still waiting on an order, the next eight months will decide whether they get a truck or a refund.
The expansion adds about 171 square miles, growing Austin’s service area by 63% from 272 to roughly 443 square miles. That’s around three times the size of Waymo’s Austin geofence.
Where the New Austin Geofence Reaches
The new map shows the service area growing in almost every direction except north, where it stays roughly the same and stops short of Round Rock and Cedar Park.
To the east, the geofence now pushes past Pflugerville toward Manor. In the southeast, it extends well past Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and beyond the TX-130 toll road. To the southwest, it now reaches the TX-45 toll road near Buda, and to the west it extends toward Lakeway.
With this expansion, Austin is once again Tesla’s largest unsupervised Robotaxi market by a wide margin. Here’s how all of Tesla’s markets compare now:
Austin: 443 sq. miles (just expanded)
San Antonio: 274 sq. miles (just launched)
Houston: 254 sq. miles
Fort Worth: 143 sq. miles
Dallas: 81 sq. miles
Miami: 31 sq. miles
Orlando: 26 sq. miles
Tampa: 24 sq. miles
Keep in mind that advertised sizes don’t always match where you can actually get picked up or dropped off. A recent analysis found that Tesla’s real usable Robotaxi zones in Texas are smaller than advertised, with Austin’s previous usable area coming in about 41% below its advertised size, mostly on the east side of town. It’ll be interesting to see how much of the new territory is actually open for rides.
Not a Tesla App
Rides Now Start at 5 a.m.
Tesla also extended Robotaxi hours again. Former Tesla intern Ethan McKanna (@ethanmckanna) shared a screenshot from the Robotaxi app showing operating hours of 5 a.m. to 2 a.m. The change took effect over the weekend.
@ethanmckanna / X
That’s an hour earlier than before. Tesla pushed service until 2 a.m. a few weeks ago, when it also added Calm Mode to make for more relaxing rides. With the new 5 a.m. start, Robotaxi now runs 21 hours a day.
Full 24/7 service might not be far off. McKanna also spotted what appeared to be unsupervised Cybercabs driving in Austin between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., wondering if Robotaxi vehicles were already operating 24/7 in the city, or at least testing for it. Neither Tesla nor the Robotaxi app has confirmed round-the-clock service yet, and the Cybercabs could have been heading to charging hubs in their downtime.
Austin is home to Tesla’s growing Cybercab fleet, with more than 300 Cybercabs already giving rides in the city. Dallas is set to become the second Cybercab market sometime this month, after Tesla took a three-month break from launching new cities before adding Fort Worth and San Antonio in back-to-back weeks.
With a bigger service area in Austin, a new launch in San Antonio, and hours getting closer to 24/7, Tesla’s Robotaxi service has grown quickly in just a few weeks. Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Jacksonville are still on Tesla’s list of upcoming cities.
