Tesla shuts down Cybertruck production for 3 days at critical time for the company
Tesla has told Cybertruck production employees not to report to work for the next three days, in another sign of demand issues for the vehicle that once touted millions of preorders.
The news was reported by Business Insider, who obtained an email telling Cybertruck production workers at Tesla’s factory in Austin, Texas that they “do not need to report to work” on “Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week (Dec. 3-5).” Workers will still be paid for their scheduled shifts.
Tesla didn’t give a comment as to why this shutdown is happening, but Business Insider said four workers told it that their schedules have been inconsistent for the last month.
Given that it is a critical time for Tesla deliveries, particularly of its flagship model, the timing is suspect.
Currently, Tesla is one of few EV producers that has sold fewer cars so far this year than it did in 2023. Despite what you may have heard, EV sales are up significantly in 2024 – but Tesla was down in the first half of this year.
The company had a good third quarter largely due to rising China sales, but is still down compared to last year.
As a result, Tesla has started pulling out a lot of stops this quarter in order to close out the year with strength. It has offered larger incentives for Tesla referral codes, lowered Model Y lease pricing, and added more flexibility to its leasing program.
And, most notably for today’s subject, just today it lowered Cybertruck lease pricing – and this happened less than a month since the company started leasing Cybertrucks at all.
It’s another sign that Tesla isn’t seeing quite as much demand as once expected for the polarizing vehicle.
After it was first unveiled in 2019, the Cybertruck managed to tally over 250k pre-orders in less than a week, later reaching a peak of potentially 2 million reservations according to crowdsourced data.
But when the truck hit the road, things didn’t go exactly as planned. The vehicle came out late and over budget, also missing some of the specs that were originally promised. The first available “Foundation Series” models started at $100k – a far cry from the promised entry-level $40k. It’s now available at a base price of $79k – but a promised future $61k base RWD model was recently removed that from Tesla’s website.
Despite all that, it’s still the best-selling electric pickup in the US and the third best-selling EV with a very high average transaction price, bringing in a good chunk of change for the company.
But nevertheless, demand seems much lower than the sky-high expectations for the vehicle. That ~2 million vehicle backlog seems to have been depleted around October of this year, when Tesla started allowing orders without a reservation. At the time, Tesla had sold somewhere around 30,000 total Cybertrucks.
This could be the explanation for the plant shutdown. Companies will often pause production lines for a few days or weeks if production is going faster than deliveries, so as not to have a lot of inventory weighing down a balance sheet.
It’s possible that there are other reasons – a line upgrade or some sort of changes related to the recent Cybertruck inverter recall – but for the former, the end of the quarter would be a better time, and for the latter, one would think the changes would have been made closer to when the problem was found (and would likely not shut down the whole line for three days).
And if there were other reasons, that’s usually the sort of thing a company sends its PR team out to discuss, so as not to spook investors with fears of waning demand. Since Tesla hasn’t made a statement suggesting such, Occam’s razor suggests that production may be outpacing demand, and the pause is to help balance the two.
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Solar panel giant Qcells announced today that it’s temporarily furloughing 1,000 US workers – 25% of its workforce – and reducing pay and shifts at its factories in northeast Georgia due to supply chain delays caused by US Customs.
Qcells furloughs 1,000 workers
The supply chain delays are hindering the company’s ability to import components to build its solar panels. This has resulted in Qcells’ two factories in Cartersville and Dalton being unable to operate at full capacity for several months.
Qcells spokeswoman Marta Stoepker shared the following statement in an exclusive with Channel 2 Action News in Atlanta:
The company says the furloughed workers, who were notified this afternoon, will retain full benefits and won’t be laid off. However, Qcells will no longer be using staffing agency employees in Georgia “at this time.”
As Qcells introduced new supply chains to support its growing solar panel manufacturing facilities in Georgia, the company was recently forced to scale back production while our shipments into the US were delayed in the customs clearance process.
Although our supply chain operations are beginning to normalize, today we shared with our employees that HR actions must be taken to improve operational efficiency until production capacity returns to normal levels.
Stoepker said it expects to bring the furloughed workers back “in the coming weeks and months.” She continued:
Our commitment to building the entire solar supply chain in the United States remains. We will soon be back on track with the full force of our Georgia team delivering American-made energy to communities around the country.
Electrek’s Take
In January 2023, the Seoul-headquartered Qcells announced it would invest more than $2.5 billion to build a solar supply chain in Georgia – the largest-ever investment in clean energy manufacturing in the US to date. That included expanding the Dalton solar factory and building a fully integrated solar supply chain factory in Cartersville, Georgia, that will manufacture solar ingots, wafers, cells, and finished panels.
It’s not quite there yet, because that takes time. In the meantime, it’s being penalized by Customs. The US government under Trump says it’s keen on boosting domestic manufacturing. Why would it work against a company that’s onshoring an entire solar supply chain, including recycling?
Dalton and Cartersville employ nearly 4,000 people. Its total output will reach 8.4 GW of solar production capacity per year, which is equivalent to nearly 46,000 panels per day – enough to power approximately 1.3 million homes annually.
It’s ludicrous that it has been forced to furlough a quarter of its workforce due to the ineptness of the Trump administration’s US Customs policies. This is right up there with the ICE arrests at Hyundai’s plant in Georgia. Bravo.
Read more: Georgia gives US solar panel manufacturing a big boost with a new factory
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The breakthrough EV batteries Toyota says will double driving range and cut charging times are facing another setback. The company is once again delaying plans for a new battery plant in Japan.
Why is Toyota delaying its EV battery plant this time?
Earlier this year, Toyota bought a 280,000-square-meter plot of land in Fukuoka, Japan, where it planned to build a plant to produce the more advanced EV batteries.
A location agreement was expected to be signed by April, but Toyota pushed back construction by several months, blaming slower-than-expected demand for electric vehicles.
The agreement was expected to be finalized this Fall, but that will no longer be the case. According to Nikkei, Toyota is delaying the EV battery plant for the second time. Toyota will review and adjust plans over the next year.
Fukuoka governor, Seitaro Hattori, confirmed the news with reporters on Friday following a meeting with Toyota’s president, Koji Sato. Hattori also shut down claims that Toyota was planning to scrap the battery plant altogether.
Toyota again blamed slowing EV demand for the delay. The decision comes despite Keiji Kaita, president of Toyota’s Carbon Neutral Advanced Engineering Development Center, confirming at the Japan Mobility Show just last week that it’s “sticking on the schedule” to introduce its first solid-state battery-powered EV by 2028.
Last month, Toyota said it aimed to “achieve the world’s first practical use of all-solid-state batteries in BEVs” after securing a partnership with Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. to mass-produce them. It’s also working with Japanese oil giant Idemitsu.
The company recently revealed a solid-state battery pack prototype that it claims can deliver 747 miles (1,200 km) range and 10-minute fast charging, but will we ever see it actually in production?
Electrek’s Take
Toyota has been making empty promises about EV batteries for almost a decade now. It initially planned to introduce solid-state EV batteries in 2020, then pushed it to 2023, then 2026, and now it’s saying it will be around 2028.
Mass production is likely closer to the end of the decade, if Toyota doesn’t delay it again. While it’s blaming the slowing demand, global EV sales are still on the rise. According to Rho Motion, global EV sales topped 2 million for the first time in a single month in September 2025. Through the first nine months of the year, EV sales are up 26% compared to the same period in 2024.
Even with the US ending the $7,500 federal tax credit and other policies designed to promote electric vehicles, global adoption will continue building momentum over the next few years.
Is it a demand issue, or is Toyota just looking for another excuse? With rivals like Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, BMW, and Honda advancing next-gen EV batteries, Toyota will only fall further behind if it continues delaying key projects.
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