After almost seven years of waiting, Tesla has ended the Cybertruck program for Australia and New Zealand. According to Electrek’s report, reservation holders began receiving cancellation emails on October 23, 2026.
What Tesla told customers
Electrek quotes the email as saying that plans to produce the Cybertruck for Australia and New Zealand have been discontinued, so reservations cannot be fulfilled. Customers are due a full refund of any payments, processed within 30 days. Australians first put down A$150 to reserve the truck in November 2019.
There is a consolation offer. Reservation holders who order a new Model 3 or Model Y instead are offered a free one-year subscription to FSD (Supervised). Electrek’s reading is that Tesla is trying to turn a dead reservation into a sale of a right-hand-drive car it already builds. That is the outlet’s interpretation, though the offer itself makes it a reasonable one.
A long wait with few signals
Electrek’s timeline shows how drawn out this was:
- November 2019: Australian reservations open at A$150.
- May 2022: Tesla reportedly closed the Australian reservation page and replaced it with a “Get updates” button, without refunding anyone.
- 2024: a Cybertruck toured Australia for display, and Elon Musk told shareholders that Tesla might be able to certify it for other markets “sometime next year”, as Electrek quotes him.
- 2026: the cancellation emails arrive, a day after Tesla’s Q3 2026 earnings report.
A 2020 crowdsourced survey, cited by Electrek, put Australia third behind the US and Canada at about 3% of reservations. Tesla never confirmed regional figures, so treat that as an estimate.
Why right-hand drive matters
The Cybertruck is built only in left-hand drive. Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Japan all need right-hand drive, and Australia also requires certification under its own design rules. Electrek calls that a large bill for a truck already facing demand questions in North America.
The truck’s international rollout so far has stayed within left-hand-drive markets. Per Electrek, deliveries began in South Korea late last year and in the UAE in January, with configurators following in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Israel. The report also says the truck remains blocked in the EU, mainly over pedestrian safety.
Our analysis: what this suggests for the UK and Japan
This section is opinion. Tesla’s email names only Australia and New Zealand, and the sources we checked do not say what happens in the UK or Japan. But the underlying obstacle is the same in every right-hand-drive market: no factory-built right-hand-drive Cybertruck exists. If Tesla would not fund that work for a market that, on paper, ranked third in reservations, it is hard to see a stronger case elsewhere. Anyone holding a reservation in those countries should watch for official communication from Tesla rather than assume either outcome.
For Australian and NZ reservation holders, the practical points are the 30-day refund window and the Model 3 or Model Y alternative. Check the terms of the FSD offer before ordering, as the details come only from Tesla’s email as relayed by Electrek.
A note for home charging
Anyone moving from a Cybertruck reservation to a Model 3 or Model Y should plan home charging early. Connector standards differ by region, so confirm the plug type your car uses in your country before buying a wall charger or having an electrician quote an install. Overnight charging at home is usually the cheapest way to keep a car topped up, but your local electricity rate sets the real cost.
Sources
Photo: Alexander-93 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0