Tesla has confirmed it has given up on plans to make a Cybertruck range extender to achieve the range it originally promised on the electric pickup truck.

It started refunding deposits for the $16,000 extra battery pack.

When Tesla unveiled the production version of the Cybertruck in late 2023, two main disappointments were the price and the range.

The tri-motor version, the most popular in reservation tallies before production, was supposed to have over 500 miles of range and start at $70,000.

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Tesla now sells the tri-motor Cybertruck for $100,000 and only has a range of 320 miles.

The dual-motor Cybertruck was supposed to cost $50,000 and have over 300 miles of range. In reality, it starts at $80,000 and has 325 miles of range.

However, Tesla had devised a solution to bring the range closer to what it originally announced: a separate battery pack that sits in the truck’s bed. Tesla called it a “range extender.” It costs $16,000 and takes up a third of the Cybertruck’s bed.

Even though the Cybertruck has been in production for a year and a half, the range extender has yet to launch.

Initially, Tesla said that it would come “early 2025”, but we reported in October 2024 that it was pushed to “mid-2025” late last year.

At the time, Tesla also reduced the range that the removable battery pack adds to the Cybertruck to “445+ miles” rather than “470+ miles” for the dual motor – a ~25-mile reduction in range.

Last month, Electrek reported that Tesla has quietly removed the range extender from the Cybertruck online configurator, where buyers could reserve it with a “$2,000 non-refundable deposit.”

At the time, we speculated that Tesla was most likely giving up on the product.

Sure enough, the automaker has now confirmed that it doesn’t plan to produce the range extender.

A Tesla Cybertruck owner contacted Electrek to share communication that Tesla started sending to Cybertruck owners who reserved the range extender, letting them know that the product is dead.

Tesla wrote in the email:

“We are no longer planning to sell the Range Extender for Cybertruck.”

The automaker says that it will start processing refunds for the deposits.

Here’s Tesla’s communication about the Cybertruck range extender in full:

Update to Your Cybertruck Range Extender Order

Hi [redacted],

Thank you for being a Cybertruck owner.

We are no longer planning to sell the Range Extender for Cybertruck. As a result, we will be refunding your deposit in full. The amount will be returned to the original payment method used for the transaction.

Thank you for your understanding.

The Tesla Team

Electrek’s Take

There could be many reasons why Tesla has given up on the product.

The range extender was confirmed to take 30% of the Cybertruck’s bed, and Tesla needed to install and remove it at a service center. Owners couldn’t remove them themselves. I think it was pretty much dead on arrival at $16,000.

But I think it could also be as simple as it’s not worth producing due to demand – both due to insufficient people reserving it and not enough Cybertruck buyers to create a market for the range extender.

Therefore, the range extender is dead for the same reason that the Cybertruck RWD now has the same battery pack as the AWD instead of a smaller pack for less money: the Cybertruck is a commercial flop, and it’s not a high-volume program enough to justify making several battery pack sizes, including a removable one.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USTPO) has denied Tesla’s attempt to trademark the term “Robotaxi”. which it has been using to refer to its long-promised self-driving vehicles.

CEO Elon Musk has been using the term “robotaxi” for years.

At first, it was to refer to what its existing consumer vehicles (Model S, X, 3, Y and Cybertruck) would become once it finally delivers on its “full self-driving” promises– something that was supposed to happen by the end of every year for the last 6 years.

However, Tesla held its ‘We, Robot’ event in October 2024, where it unveiled two new vehicles, a dedicated robotaxi vehicle and a self-driving ‘Robovan’ – pictured above.

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Musk referred to the dedicated robotaxi vehicle as both a ‘Robotaxi’ and ‘Cybercab’.

Shortly after the event, we reported that Tesla filed trademarks for both terms, as well as ‘Robobus’ and ‘Robovan’.

Now, Techcrunch reports that USTPO has denied Tesla’s trademark application for being too generic:

Tesla’s attempt to trademark the term “Robotaxi” in reference to its vehicles has been refused by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for being too generic, according to a new filing. Another application by Tesla to trademark the term “Robotaxi” for its upcoming ride-hailing service is still under examination by the office.

USTPO notes that other companies and media have used the term ‘robotaxi” to refer to other self-driving vehicles.

The decision is “non-final”. Tesla can still appeal the decision.

Tesla also saw its trademark application for ‘Cybercab’ halted as USTPO reviews other applications using the term ‘cyber’.

Electrek’s Take

I don’t think Tesla should get a trademark for ‘Robotaxi’. It’s indeed too generic. ‘Cybercab’ should be fine though. If Tesla was able to get Cybertruck, it should be able to get ‘Cybercab’.

I hope the Cybercab works out better for them than the Cybertruck has so far.

But it’s tough to make a steering wheel-less vehicle works if you haven’t solved self-driving.

California and 16 other states have sued the government for illegally withholding $5 billion in funds that Congress earmarked for EV charging, calling the action “another trump gift to China.”

The federal NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) program was established by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), otherwise known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, pushed for and signed by President Joe Biden.

Among other things, the IIJA dedicated $5 billion in funding to expanding EV chargers, in order to give more Americans access to EV ownership, and allow them to unlock the fuel cost and health savings that EV owners, and communities with high EV penetration, enjoy.

Since then, every state has submitted a plan and that money has gotten assigned to projects around the country in various levels of completion, with several charging stations already open.

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The NEVI program was even the main driver of Tesla opening up its charging port and creating the NACS standard, due to the law’s requirement that federal funding can only go to charging stations that have open access to multiple brands of vehicle. Tesla’s Superchargers used to be open only to Teslas, but after this law passed, Tesla started opening them up to other brands.

And wide adoption of the NACS standard by the industry promises to fix a lot of the problems with EV charging.

So, NEVI is a great program, and it’s helping Americans to save on fuel and maintenance costs, reducing barriers to charging, and making the world cleaner for everyone who breathes air.

So of course, the enemy of America currently occupying the White House (despite there being a clear Constitutional remedy for this crisis) opposes it.

In February, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), at the behest of convicted felon Donald Trump, froze funding for the NEVI program, even though that funding was already allocated by Congress for this purpose. Who knew a felon would break the law?

Now, states are pushing back against the illegal funding freeze, as 17 states, led by California, Colorado and Washington, are suing the FHWA to free up the funds that were allocated to them.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta laid out their argument today in a press release by the California Governor’s office.

Among those arguments is something we’ve mentioned many times here on Electrek: that republican efforts to diminish the US EV industry are a “gift to China,” who have well and truly taken the lead in the global EV industry, and other countries – particularly the US – are just not doing enough to keep up.

When America retreats, China wins.

President Trump’s illegal action withholding funds for electric vehicle infrastructure is yet another Trump gift to China – ceding American innovation and killing thousands of jobs.

Instead of hawking Teslas on the White House lawn, President Trump could actually help Elon – and the nation – by following the law and releasing this bipartisan funding.

-California Governor Gavin Newsom

Another of President Biden’s laws, the Inflation Reduction Act, was an effort to increase investment in the EV industry in the US – and did so while also lowering the deficit. It worked extremely well, leading to hundreds of billions in investment and hundreds of thousands of jobs in American EV manufacturing. Certainly much more effective than the unwise tariffs that both President Biden and Mr. Trump have supported.

However, as one might expect from an enemy of America, Mr. Trump has opposed that law as well. After he begged the oil industry for a billion-dollar bribe to harm EVs during his presidential campaign (where he also repeatedly promised to raise inflation for Americans), his republican party now thinks they have the votes to inflate the price of EVs by $7,500.

Oddly, despite Mr. Trump’s clear opposition to the well-being of Americans, and particularly to the well-being of the American auto industry, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, perhaps America’s most high-profile auto CEO, donated hundreds of millions of dollars to this anti-EV candidate. He has used tortured logic to claim that raising the price of his products by $7,500 relative to the competition won’t hurt his business, but that’s just wrong.

As Governor Newsom points out in his quote above, this situation seems puzzling. While Mr. Trump did improperly utilize government property to create a bizarre ad for his largest political donor, his policy proposals so far – which Musk claims he “loves” – have generally been directed towards harming Tesla and other EVs. The money from the NEVI program could go a long way towards filling the gaps in EV charger buildout around the country, making Teslas more usable for Americans who don’t live in areas where chargers are easy to come by.

Pausing that funding not only puts charger plans into chaos (something Musk is no stranger to), it also means that Tesla can’t use money that it created an entire charging standard just to get a piece of.

The lawsuit requests that a court stop Mr. Trump’s illegal actions and permanently halt the FHWA from withholding these funds.

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