Cybertruck: Tesla Halts Delivery Plans for Oceania Reservations
Tesla is voiding pre-orders for its electric pickup in the region and directing those funds toward other vehicle purchases.
By Xiaoyu Wang ·
Tesla has officially abandoned its plans to deliver the Cybertruck to Australia and New Zealand, notifying reservation holders via email that their orders will be cancelled. The correspondence informs customers that any money held for the vehicle will be returned, with processing to occur within a 30-day window. The automaker is attempting to pivot these customers toward other inventory, offering a complimentary one-year subscription to FSD (Supervised) for those who choose to purchase a Model 3 or Model Y instead.
The timeline for this vehicle began in November 2019, when Australians first placed deposits to reserve the pickup. Despite these early financial commitments, the order page for the region was quietly shut down in May 2022, replaced by a generic updates button. Even as the reservation list remained active, Tesla did not refund participants at that time.
Interest in the vehicle remained high for years following the initial deposit period. A crowdsourced survey conducted in 2020 ranked Australia as the third-largest market for reservations globally, trailing only the United States and Canada. By 2023, tracking efforts suggested the total number of Cybertruck reservations had reached approximately 2 million units. The company continued to delay definitive answers regarding production for the region, with Elon Musk telling shareholders in 2024 that certification for other markets might happen the following year.
The primary obstacle preventing delivery remains the vehicle's design. The Cybertruck is manufactured solely in a left-hand-drive configuration, while the target markets require right-hand drive. Furthermore, any version sold in Australia would need to pass specific design rule certification, a process requiring significant investment for a vehicle that is already struggling to find buyers in North America.
Current production volumes do not justify the cost of adapting the vehicle for new regions. Tesla delivered 8,295 units in the 'Other Models' category for Q3 2026, a group that consists almost entirely of Cybertruck inventory. This quarterly figure translates to a production rate of roughly 30,000 units annually, a fraction of the 250,000-unit capacity the manufacturing line was built to support.
Because of these low volumes, the company cannot justify the expense of re-engineering the truck for right-hand-drive markets. Consequently, international expansion efforts for the vehicle are limited to left-hand-drive nations, with recent deliveries occurring in South Korea and the UAE. The Cybertruck remains unavailable in the European Union due to pedestrian safety concerns.
Source: Electrek
