Tesla reportedly scrapped its factory wrapping service for the Cybertruck after less than a year on sale this week. The wrapping service, which is designed to protect paintwork on cars from chips or rust that might be picked up in daily drives, has been removed from the Tesla site after being sold out since January.
The Cybertruck wrapping service kicked off in December 2023 and promised to offer a layer of protection on the electric truck for the low, low price of $6,000. The optional wrap could be ordered in 11 colors and sold out almost as soon as it went on sale.
Since January 2024, it’s been impossible to spec a Cybertruck with the factory wrap and now Tesla has officially removed the option from its website, reports Inside EVs:
Ever since the Tesla Cybertruck debuted as a prototype back in 2019, Tesla and its rather outspoken CEO, Elon Musk, made a couple of things clear. One of those things was that the angular-shaped electric pickup’s stainless steel body didn’t need any protection.
That includes paint. “No paint, no chips,” as per Tesla’s website. So when the AI and robotics company started selling factory-installed paint protection film, some eyebrows were raised among the community, especially since the product’s description on Tesla’s online shop read clearly: “Protects against scratches.”
Well, at least it used to read that, because the factory wrap service is dead, as spotted by Drive Tesla Canada. It’s not exactly a tear-filled event, seeing how the various colored wraps have been mostly out of stock since January, according to the automaker’s website seen through the Wayback Machine. But removing the service entirely from the web – the shop page no longer exists – can mean several things.
Tesla reportedly ran into supply chain issues with the wrap, which used a urethane-based film rather than the traditional vinyl that’s used to wrap many models, adds Motor1. Tesla claimed that the wrap was “self-healing” and twice as thick as other wraps, however Inside EVs reports that the advantages of the wrapping tech were countered by issues “somewhere along the supply chain.”
Those supply chain issues are just one reason Tesla may have canned the wrapping service, with Inside EVs adding that it could have been scrapped as a result of limited demand, both for the wraps and for the trucks themselves. In recent weeks, it’s been getting increasingly easy to order a brand new Cybertruck direct from Tesla, with wait times now down to as little as a week after the automaker worked through its “millions” of pre-orders.
With fewer and fewer people buying the trucks, it wouldn’t make sense for Tesla to dedicate an area of its factory to wrapping them when it could be using the space for more important things.
Wraps such as this have also come under fire in recent weeks after one Cybertruck owner found issues when removing vinyl stickers from his gargantuan EV.