Tesla Ends Seven Year Wait for Australian Cybertruck Owners
The electric automaker has officially voided nearly 7 years of deposits for customers in the region who were promised a right-hand drive pickup.
By Luis Fernandez ·
Nearly 7 years after Australians first paid A$150 to reserve an electric pickup, Tesla has officially canceled the Cybertruck for the region. The decision marks the end of a long period of uncertainty for thousands of customers who have waited since November 2019 for a vehicle that the company now says it will not build for the market. Reservation holders began receiving emails this morning confirming that their orders are void and that their deposits will be refunded. The message, which was quickly shared on social media platforms and Reddit, states that after careful consideration, plans to produce the truck for Australia and New Zealand have been discontinued.
The cancellation is directly tied to a fundamental engineering mismatch. The Cybertruck is manufactured exclusively in left-hand drive, a configuration that does not align with the driving standards in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Japan. For the truck to be sold in these regions, Tesla would have needed to re-engineer the vehicle for right-hand drive and complete specific certification processes. This requirement represented a significant financial burden for a model that is already facing demand challenges in North America. Consequently, the automaker decided that the investment was no longer justified for markets that combined hold a population of only about 33 million people.
Financial metrics further support the rationale behind the cancellation. Tesla reported that it delivered just 8,295 vehicles in the "Other Models" category during the third quarter of 2026. This category now consists almost entirely of Cybertruck units, as production of the Model S and Model X has ended. Estimates suggest that Cybertruck sales reached between 7,000 and 8,000 units last quarter, indicating an annual pace of roughly 30,000 units. This figure is far below the 250,000 units annually that the production line was originally designed to handle, making a costly regional adaptation difficult to justify from a business perspective.
The path to this final decision has been marked by several years of delay. Tesla quietly closed the Australian reservation page in May 2022, replacing the order option with a button to receive updates, but did not refund customers at that time. In 2024, the company shipped a single Cybertruck to the region for a display tour, and CEO Elon Musk told shareholders that the company might certify it for other markets the following year. That deadline passed without the arrival of a right-hand drive version. The recent email to customers arrives just one day after Tesla released its Q3 2026 earnings report.
To soften the blow of the cancellation, Tesla is offering a free one-year subscription to its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software for reservation holders who place an order for a new Model 3 or Model Y. This strategy appears designed to convert dead reservations into sales of vehicles that the company actually builds in right-hand drive configurations. While the company has successfully launched the Cybertruck in left-hand drive markets such as South Korea and the UAE, the truck remains blocked in the EU primarily due to pedestrian safety concerns. For now, the electric pickup appears to be settling into a role as a niche product primarily for American buyers.
The cancellation confirms a shift in Tesla's international strategy, focusing on finding buyers for existing left-hand drive inventory rather than expanding the model into new regions. Although some reservation holders may have already canceled their pre-orders, the official refund process will be completed within 30 days. The decision closes a chapter on the truck's global ambitions, leaving the right-hand drive markets without a dedicated Tesla electric pickup for the foreseeable future.
Source: Electrek
