[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong (홍진주)] Tesla has officially withdrawn its plan to launch the Cybertruck electric pickup in Australia and New Zealand and cancelled all existing reservations. The company is giving up on the launch about 7 years after taking reservations from 2019. Delays in developing a right-hand-drive vehicle and weak sales are emerging as obstacles to expanding into overseas markets.

On Oct. 23 local time, Tesla sent emails to Cybertruck reservation holders in Australia and New Zealand advising them that their orders were being cancelled and their deposits refunded, according to major foreign media outlets including EV publication Electrek.

In the email, Tesla said it had halted its production plan for the Cybertruck for Australia and New Zealand after careful review. It said it was cancelling orders because it could not fulfil reservations. Deposits will be fully refunded, and the process is expected to be completed within 30 days.

The move came shortly after Tesla released its 2026 third-quarter results. Australian consumers have been able to reserve a Cybertruck since November 2019 by paying 150 Australian dollars. With reservations cancelled after a long wait without delivery, disappointment is expected to grow among consumers who had hoped for a local launch.

Tesla also appeared to be trying to shift demand to other models. Cybertruck reservation holders who order the new Model 3 or Model Y can subscribe for free for 1 year to supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) functionality. The move is seen as an effort to shift demand to existing models that can be sold locally rather than supplying a right-hand-drive Cybertruck.

A key backdrop to the decision is seen as the difficulty of developing a right-hand-drive model. The Cybertruck is currently produced only in a left-hand-drive version. Australia and New Zealand, as well as Britain and Japan, use right-hand-drive vehicles, and Australia also requires separate vehicle design and certification of safety standards.

Tesla told shareholders in 2024 that it could possibly certify the Cybertruck in other markets as early as the following year, but a right-hand-drive model has not been released since. Selling vehicles in Australia and New Zealand would require separate development and certification, but Tesla has ultimately halted its production plan for that.

The Cybertruck's overseas expansion has so far focused on left-hand-drive markets. Deliveries began in South Korea at the end of 2025, and the sales region was expanded to the United Arab Emirates in January 2026. Vehicle configurators were later unveiled in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Israel, among others.

In the European Union, sales are limited because regulations related to pedestrian safety pose an obstacle. With right-hand-drive development issues added, the overseas markets the Cybertruck can target appear to be narrowing further.

Sales performance also appears to have added pressure on overseas expansion. According to Tesla's 2026 third-quarter results, deliveries of 'other models' excluding the Model 3 and Model Y totalled 8,295 units. The Cybertruck is known to account for most of that category.

Based on that, Electrek estimated the Cybertruck sold about 7,000 to 8,000 units in the quarter. That translates to about 30,000 units a year. That is a significant gap from the annual production capacity of up to 250,000 units that Tesla has built for Cybertruck production.

Australia was initially seen as a major overseas reservation market for the Cybertruck. A crowdsourced study based on 2020 reservation data tallied Australia as the third-largest reservation market after the United States and Canada. Its share of total reservations was about 3 percent. The figure is based on an unofficial survey, and Tesla has not officially disclosed reservation volumes by region.

There had also been earlier signals suggesting a halt to the launch. Tesla changed its Australian Cybertruck reservation page in May 2022, switching from a reservation function to a system for receiving launch updates. In 2024, it brought the Cybertruck to Australia for an exhibition tour, but it did not lead to actual sales.

The reservation cancellations are interpreted as a sign that Tesla has effectively abandoned entry into right-hand-drive markets for the Cybertruck. With sales falling short of initial expectations, it is seen as having opted to maintain its existing production system rather than bear the cost and time required to separately develop and certify a right-hand-drive model.

As a result, the Cybertruck's overseas expansion is increasingly likely, for the time being, to focus on markets where left-hand-drive vehicles can be sold. Unless Tesla presents plans again to develop a right-hand-drive model, it is expected to be difficult to see the Cybertruck in major right-hand-drive markets including Australia and New Zealand.