With Sales Plummeting, Tesla Cancels Key Cybertruck Component
Tesla has officially abandoned its plan to sell a $16,000 range extender for the Cybertruck, Electrek reports — the latest in the automaker's struggles with the incredibly controversial vehicle.
This week, customers who paid a $2,000 reservation fee for the extender received emails from Tesla stating it was no longer selling the add-on, but that it would fully refund their deposits. Electrek reached out to the automaker and confirmed the decision.
Per the reporting, the cancellation comes a month after Tesla quietly pulled the range extender as an add-on on its website's vehicle configurator. No official reason for the cancellation has been given.
With a base range of 320 to 350 miles on a single charge, depending on the configuration, the Cybertruck launched with a far shorter range than the 500-plus miles that CEO Elon Musk once promised. The range extender, a battery pack designed to be installed in the pickup bed, was supposed to make up for that failure.
However, since the accessory was announced around the time the Cybertruck started being delivered in late 2023, Tesla has waffled on how much of a boost the add-on would give. It first said that it would extend the Cybertruck's range to 470 miles, but it later walked back that figure to 445 miles, when the automaker delayed its release date to mid-2025.
Symbolically, by canning the add-on entirely, Tesla has admitted defeat on ever fulfilling its original pledge.
In any case, the extender was always a questionable option. On top of costing as much as a used car, it was going to weigh a whopping 600 pounds and take up an entire third of the rear bed's room once installed.
But the dumped add-on is only the tip of Tesla's troubles with the Cybertruck, which has sold less than 50,000 units since it launched — a far cry from Musk's boast that it would easily move 250,000 per year. In reality, Cybertruck sales have continued to plummet, with only 6,400 of the electric pickups selling in the first quarter of this year. Its inventory of unsold Cybetrucks, meanwhile, has reportedly piled up to a record high of over 10,000 units.
Buyers have plenty of reasons to stay away. Fraught with quality concerns, the Cybertruck has faced eight separate recalls, with the latest one — issued because its glued-on body panels could fly off — affecting nearly all of the vehicles it had ever sold.
The Cybertruck's image has also been irreversibly tarnished by its close association with Musk, who has become deeply reviled for his far-right politics and his role in the Trump administration.
While Tesla recently announced a cheaper version of the Cybertruck with a slightly longer range and far fewer features, it seems unlikely that the bid will excite sales. Clearly, it didn't have much faith in the range extender doing well, and with reports that it's slowing down production of the Cybertruck, maybe the automaker is finally seeing the writing on the wall.
More on Tesla: Tesla's Sales Are Somehow Continuing to Fall
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