Tesla Is Killing The Cybertruck. BMW Designers Admired Its Nerve, But BMW Never Wanted A Pickup
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Tesla Cybertruck production at Giga Texas ends in mid-2027, while BMW’s closest brush with the idea, the G74 Rugged, never got approved.
Elon Musk said on X on Friday that production of the Tesla Cybertruck will start winding down at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of 2027, “to make room for increased Cybercab production.” If that holds, the stainless steel pickup will have been on sale for about three and a half years.
Tesla sized the line for 250,000 trucks a year, but Kelley Blue Book estimates it sold 20,237 Cybertrucks in 2025, down from 38,965 in 2024. Cox Automotive counts 11,586 US sales through September of this year.
Why Is Tesla Really Ending Cybertruck Production?
Musk blames floor space for the Cybercab robotaxi, but Electrek notes that Giga Texas has more than 10 million square feet and the Cybertruck line already runs at about a quarter of its installed capacity. Tesla promised a $39,900 starting price in 2019, listed the cheapest truck at $60,990 when sales began in late 2023, and was charging $74,990 for the entry Dual-Motor AWD after an August increase. That trim can no longer be ordered at all.
Nearly every Cybertruck on the road was recalled in March 2025 over an exterior panel issue, the truck can’t be sold in Europe or most right-hand-drive markets, and last month Tesla canceled reservations in Australia and New Zealand nearly seven years after opening them.
What BMW Designers Told Us About The Cybertruck
When we spoke with some BMW designers off the record in the past, they appreciated the Cybertruck’s daring, unconventional design. Most designers like strange things, and few production vehicles are stranger. Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen has said the truck’s hard lines came from the stainless steel Musk handed his team, and a shape dictated by a material rather than a customer clinic is something designers rarely get to do. Admiring it was as far as it went, though: there was never an intention for BMW to chase a segment like that.
Has BMW Ever Seriously Considered Building A Pickup Truck?
No, and its executives keep saying so. Then-R&D chief Klaus Fröhlich said in 2019 that a proper pickup needs a ladder-frame architecture BMW doesn’t have. Adrian van Hooydonk, BMW’s design chief at the time, told BMWBLOG in 2023 that a pickup is “not an obvious fit for the BMW brand,” and last year Bernd Koerber, senior vice president of BMW brand and product management, told us: “Pickup is not a segment we look at.” Mercedes-Benz showed what happens when a German luxury brand tries anyway: its Navara-based X-Class sold 15,300 units worldwide in 2019 and was out of production by May 2020.
BMW’s pickups have stayed one-offs: the 1986 E30 M3 Pickup that hauled parts for BMW M until 2012, its E93 M3-based successor that doubled as a 2011 April Fools’ joke, and the X7 Pick-up built by Munich plant trainees in 2019.
Why The Canceled BMW Rugged Was The Closest BMW Came
The closest BMW came was the G74 “Rugged,” a true off-road vehicle with big tires, a spare wheel on the back, and real off-road hardware. The rumor is that the idea grew partly out of BMW’s evaluation of the Rivian R1T, so BMW studied an electric pickup and came away wanting an SUV. It started as an electric model on the Neue Klasse NA5 platform, then moved to CLAR alongside the next-generation G65 X5, with Spartanburg production and a 2029 launch target. Its tailgate-style rear seating was about as close to a pickup bed as BMW was willing to get.
In July, we reported the Rugged failed to clear final approval, as a bespoke luxury off-roader struggled to justify itself against the G-Class and Range Rover. The Land Rover Defender alone hit a record 115,404 deliveries in 2025, and BMW still judged that segment too small to enter from scratch.
The Cybertruck, built on a line sized for 250,000 trucks a year, never topped 40,000 in a year by Kelley Blue Book’s estimates. BMW’s designers can keep their soft spot for the stainless steel wedge, but the people who approve BMW’s product plan were never going to see a business in those numbers.
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