The Cybertruck is coming to Saudi Arabia and Dubai. That's still a problem for Tesla.

• Tesla plans to sell the Cybertruck in Saudi Arabia and the UAE as it tries to sell more of the embattled model.
• The Cybertruck has struggled since its 2023 launch, selling fewer than 50,000 per a recent recall.
• Its design makes it difficult to sell in China and Europe, leaving smaller markets Tesla's only option.

The Cybertruck is coming to Saudi Arabia as Tesla battles to revive Elon Musk's "apocalypse-proof" truck around.

Tesla announced this month it would start selling the Cybertruck in Saudi Arabia, as well as the UAE and Qatar, marking the first time the divisive electric pickup has been sold outside North America. Deliveries will begin in "late 2025," per Tesla's website.

The arrival of the Cybertruck in Saudi Arabia — where EV chargers are scarce and the market for electric cars is tiny — comes amid underwhelming sales of the stainless steel-clad vehicle.

Tesla sold just 6,406 Cybertrucks in the first three months of 2025, according to data from Cox Automotive. Employees previously told Business Insider that some production targets for the truck at the Austin gigafactory had been dropped.

The automaker has delivered fewer than 50,000 of the trucks as of March 20, according to a recall notice.

That's a long way from the lofty targets set out by Musk before the Cybertruck launched in 2023.

The world's richest person said Tesla planned to produce 200,000 Cybertrucks a year, and there were some 1.5 million reservations for the trapezoid truck before its release, according to one online tally reported by Electrek.

"There's really no way to describe its sales record today as anything other than a severe disappointment," Glenn Mercer, the president of automotive consultancy GM Automotive, told BI.

Launching an all-electric truck in the oil-producing region is a novel approach to turning around the Cybertruck's lackluster sales. It might be one of the few options open to Tesla.

Mercer said that the Cybertruck's unique design and sheer size meant it faced major barriers to entry in Europe and China, Tesla's biggest markets outside North America.

In the European Union, where Tesla sold more than 300,000 cars last year, narrow roads and strict regulations mean the Cybertruck can only be driven with major modifications. One of the first trucks to appear in the UK was seized by police earlier this year as it was not road-legal.

Despite shipping some Cybertrucks to China last year for display purposes, Tesla also faces headwinds in selling the electric pickup in its second-largest — and most competitive — market.

Musk said on X last year that making a Cybertruck road-legal in China would be "very difficult." Pickup trucks in China have a history of strict regulation, although some of those rules have been loosened in recent years.

Both China and Europe have tiny pickup markets compared with the US, so it's not clear whether the investment required to change the Cybertruck's design and build a network of repair shops to service the truck's unique features would be economic.

Mercer said Tesla would likely try to reposition the Cybertruck as a boutique luxury vehicle for small international markets such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE as it expands outside North America.

"Given the high cost of adjusting the vehicle to each local market, I would imagine they would try to sell a very expensive, high-priced version of it as a niche or premium vehicle to make it worthwhile going after a dozen small overseas markets," he said.

As a result, taking the Cybertruck global is unlikely to do much to turn around Tesla's sales slump — or halt the "brand crisis tornado" that has turned some of the trucks into a target.