A Retiree Who Bought 1,000 Tesla Shares at $197 Just Watched Musk Kill the Cybertruck
Musk is ending the Cybertruck. Here is what that means for a retiree holding 1,000 Tesla shares bought at $197.
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said on Friday that Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at its Texas factory around the middle of next year, to make room for more Cybercab production. The stock rose 4.23% on the day to close at $358.22, recovering part of Thursday’s 10.77% drop in a broad market sell-off.
Tesla still ended the week 10.4% lower, and it sits 26.9% below its record close of $489.88 on Dec. 16, 2025.
Take a 66-year-old retiree who bought 1,000 Tesla shares on Nov. 7, 2022, at $197.08 a share. That was a $197,080 investment. At the record the shares were worth $489,880. On Friday they were worth $358,220. They also hold $700,000 in other retirement savings, so Tesla is 33.9% of a $1,058,220 portfolio. The question this weekend is what the end of the Cybertruck means for those shares.
What Musk announced
Musk made the announcement in a post on X early Friday. “Tesla will be winding down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of next year to make room for increased Cybercab production,” he wrote. He called the Cybertruck the best vehicle Tesla has ever made and said the fleet will be around for a long time.
The truck never reached the volume Tesla planned. Tesla does not report Cybertruck sales on their own. It groups the truck into an “Other Models” category, which delivered 8,295 vehicles in the third quarter, down 32.9% from 12,364 in the second quarter, according to Reuters. Kelley Blue Book estimates about 71,000 Cybertrucks have sold since 2023, against factory capacity built for 250,000 a year.
The Cybercab is a robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals. Tesla began offering paid rides in a small Cybercab fleet in Austin in September. Earlier, Tesla also dropped the Model S and Model X to free factory space for its Optimus robot.
What the retiree’s shares have done
Measured from the purchase, the investment has done well. The 1,000 shares cost $197,080 and are worth $358,220, a gain of $161,140, or 81.8%, in four years.
Measured from the record, the same shares have given back $131,660. Thursday’s sell-off alone took $41,500, and Friday returned $14,530 of it.
Tesla pays no dividend, so the shares produce no income. Every dollar this retiree takes from them has to come from selling.
The case for holding
Many Tesla investors are buying the robotaxi and robot story, and Friday’s move suggests the market saw the Cybertruck news that way. Shifting factory space from a slow seller to the Cybercab puts more of Tesla’s capacity behind the product Musk says will become its highest-volume vehicle.
Of the 44 analysts tracked, the average price target is $413.10, about 15.3% above Friday’s close. Getting back to the December record would take a 36.8% gain.
The case for trimming
The numbers under the story are thin. Tesla’s revenue over the past four quarters was $103.57 billion, roughly flat from a year earlier in the latest quarter, with a profit margin of 3.11%. At $358.22, the stock trades at about 394 times its earnings over the past year. Analysts are split: 20 rate it a buy or strong buy, 22 a hold and 2 a sell.
The Cybercab also has questions to answer. Federal auto safety regulators are still asking whether Tesla properly certified that the vehicle meets federal safety standards.
For a retiree, one stock at 33.9% of everything they own is a large bet, and Thursday showed how fast it can move. A single 10.77% day cost this portfolio $41,500.
A middle path
If the retiree sells 300 of the 1,000 shares at Friday’s price:
- Proceeds: $107,466
- Taxable gain: $48,342, since each share cost $197.08
- Federal tax at the 15% long-term rate: about $7,251
- What remains: 700 shares worth $250,754, or 23.7% of the portfolio
If the shares sit in a traditional IRA, the sale creates no tax bill today. The proceeds could cover several years of withdrawals, so the retiree would not be forced to sell Tesla after another bad day.
Where this is weak
Nobody knows how many Cybercabs Tesla will build or sell, and the stock’s price depends far more on that than on the Cybertruck. The analyst target is an average across views that disagree widely. And the 15% tax figure assumes the gain stays inside that bracket; a sale this size could push part of it to 20%.
The bottom line
Musk ending the Cybertruck is a big headline, but the stock’s 4.23% rise on Friday shows investors care more about what replaces it. For a 66-year-old who turned $197,080 into $358,220, the larger question is how much of a retirement should ride on one company with no dividend. Selling 300 shares would cut Tesla to 23.7% of the portfolio for about $7,251 in tax.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
I've been writing about stocks and personal finance for 20+ years. I believe all great companies are tech companies in the long run, and I invest accordingly.
