Tesla tells Australian and New Zealand reservation holders their Cybertruck orders are void

Tesla has stopped plans to sell the Cybertruck in Australia and New Zealand, and emails to reservation holders started arriving on 23 October. The messages tell buyers their orders are cancelled and their deposits returned. The wait began in November 2019, when Australians could reserve the truck with an A$150 deposit. "After careful consideration, plans to produce Cybertruck for Australia and New Zealand have been discontinued," Tesla wrote in the email customers shared on Reddit and social media, adding that it is "unable to fulfil your reservation and it will be cancelled."

Tesla says any payments will be refunded in full within 30 days. Buyers who place an order for a new Model 3 or Model Y instead will receive a one-year subscription to FSD (Supervised) at no cost. The emails went out one day after Tesla reported third-quarter 2026 earnings.

Australia looked like a sizable market early on. A crowdsourced survey of reservations in 2020 ranked it third behind the United States and Canada, at about 3% of all Cybertruck reservations, though Tesla never released regional figures. By 2023, crowdsourced tracking put total reservations near 2 million. Tesla shut the Australian reservation page in May 2022, replacing it with a "Get updates" button, and issued no refunds then. In 2024, a Cybertruck went to Australia for a display tour, and Elon Musk told shareholders that year: "We might be able to certify it for other markets sometime next year." No right-hand-drive version followed.

The Cybertruck is built only in left-hand drive, while Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Japan require right-hand drive. Australia also requires certification under its own design rules. Tesla's international rollout has stayed in left-hand-drive countries: deliveries began in South Korea late last year and in the UAE in January, with configurators later appearing in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Israel. The truck remains unavailable in the EU, largely over pedestrian safety concerns.

Sales figures do not support a redesign for those markets. Tesla delivered 8,295 vehicles in its "Other Models" category in the third quarter of 2026, a group now made up almost entirely of the Cybertruck since Model S and Model X production ended. Electrek estimates quarterly Cybertruck sales at 7,000 to 8,000 units, or about 30,000 a year, against a production line built for 250,000 annually. Electrek also noted that US sales have fallen from about 39,000 in 2024, and said many Australian reservation holders may have already cancelled, since the truck that arrived in 2023 cost more and offered less range than promised. Australia and New Zealand together have about 33 million people.