The polarizing pickup drives great, but ain’t good at truck things or delivering on the prototype’s promises—here’s why that doesn’t matter
The Tesla Cybertruck. The five-year reigning champ of memes. It was conceived of as a spur-of-the-moment idea from the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, a man able to turn every impulsive Tweet into reality. Ever since it debuted with a window-breaking smash in late 2019, the Cybertruck has set Internet comment sections ablaze with debate. It’s been featured on multiple Joe Rogan podcasts, and is the first vehicle to ever be reviewed by former Fox News host and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
Barely 40% of the features Tesla touted the Cybertruck would come with at its debut have actually come to fruition on the production model, but buyers do not seem to care. Is the Cybertruck heralding an impending revolution of the way we design and build pickup trucks? Is it a fad-dish meme with style, but no substance to back it up? Does this review even matter when you’ve already decided you either deeply love or loathe the Cybertruck because of its divisive creator?
It’s been five long years since the Cybertruck debuted, and the first actual production versions are only now beginning to trickle into Canada. As is the Elon way, many lofty promises were made about the Cybertruck and its capabilities. It was claimed to have armoured glass; three-mm-thick bullet-resistant doors; an onboard air compressor outlet for reinflating tires; and Tesla’s much-vaunted “Full Self Driving.” It was also claimed the top version would be able to haul 3,500 pounds in-bed, tow 14,000 lbs, run a 10.7-second quarter-mile, and be capable of travelling 500 miles (800 km) on a single charge.
Literally not a single one of the claims I mentioned above has borne out on the production Cybertruck. And that’s before we get into the fact it arrives costing more than double the advertised price from 2019, or that the entry-level single-motor RWD Cybertruck has yet to materialize. But there’s one thing the haters got wrong: Tesla did actually build the thing.
From Blade Runner fantasy to real deal
The Cybertruck is indeed real, and you can really buy one today, if you so choose. And while the overall design from the concept survives, it underwent some major changes in going from concept to production. Overall, the production version of the Cybertruck has shrunk roughly 10% from the bulked-up version we saw in 2019. In an effort to make it actually fit inside most garages, Tesla shrunk the Cybertruck by some eight inches (203 mm) in length; and a full 5.3 inches (134 mm) in height, compared to the concept.
It’s not obvious until you start to look at photos of the concept and production version side by side, but a good bit of attitude has been removed for sensible, real-world feasibility.
Another major thing lost from concept to production was the proposed structural exoskeleton. The Cybertruck promised to be constructed in an entirely new way versus all other modern cars, and it had us talking. Originally, the concept touted that those aforementioned three-millimetre-thick stainless steel panels were to be the actual structure of the vehicle, negating the use of a traditional (and heavy) steel frame.
When the stainless panels no longer needed to be structural, they were whittled down from the concept’s three-mm-thick spec. Body panels of the production Cybertruck are 1.4 mm thick all around, save for the doors, which are slightly thicker at 1.8 mm.
One of the Cybertruck’s original marketing claims was that it would resist penetration through the steel from a 9-mm handgun round. And to Tesla’s credit, this remains true even with the thinner steel! So is the Cybertruck “bulletproof”? Yes. Kind of. It won’t resist more powerful, higher-calibre rounds. And the “armoured glass” that was pitched in 2019 and famously broke during the demo? Yeah, that didn’t make it to reality. The Cybertruck uses fairly standard double-layer acoustic glass.
Putting Cybertruck to the test
While many YouTubers have made viral videos “testing” the Cybertruck by shooting at it with guns and even bow and arrows, we won’t be doing anything like that, because our test unit is a privately-owned vehicle we rented through Turo. Tesla famously doesn’t have a PR department, and so acquiring a press vehicle to review is a difficult and mercurial process.
So when car-sharing platform Turo reached out to us about trying out its service by renting a car on its app, we knew it had to be a Cybertruck. We should note, though, you can rent more than Cybertrucks on Turo. Think of it like airbnb, in that the vehicles on offer come from people listing their own personally owned cars for rent; it’s on you to select whichever you’d like to drive. It can be cheaper than a typical airport rental car in some cases, and there is a tonne of variety to choose from. It’s a more personal experience than a typical rental, too, as most of the hand-offs are done in-person.
In short, my Turo booking meant I had an extended test drive of the Cybertruck in Houston across four days, to let me find out what it was really like to live with a meme car. I’ll start by saying the strangest part of the driving experience is something you notice immediately: the steering. The Tesla Cybertruck has steer-by-wire, which means there is no mechanical shaft or linkage connecting the steering wheel in the cabin to the front wheels. Infiniti was the first to do this back in 2014, but its system didn’t work very smoothly, and was almost universally panned.
The Cybertruck steering wheel is a “squircle,” which is normally annoying, but actually tolerable here, because the wheel barely turns 360 degrees lock to lock, about one-half that of a normal vehicle. It also means you never have to remove your hands from the 9- and 3-o’clock positions for hand-over-hand steering. At low speeds, the Cybertruck positively jumps from side to side with merely a wiggle of the wheel. It can make your typical urban 90-degree right-hand turn with barely 35 degrees of steering-wheel input.
For the first few miles, I was lurching from side to side in my lane as I grew accustomed to this level of steering response. At low speeds, the steering is as reactive as a Ferrari, and very small movements with your hands make large changes in direction. But as speeds rise, the steering becomes less responsive. At highway speeds, the wheel felt fairly normal, and I had no issues navigating lane changes and merge ramps easily.
Part of the reason the Cybertruck can change direction so quickly is that it has active rear steering. The rear wheels turn opposite the fronts at low speeds, effectively tightening its turning circle. This really helps with U-turns, and makes the Cybertruck feel much smaller than it is. But when reversing, the effect is a bit disorienting, and I can imagine it would complicate the act of backing up a trailer.
Otherwise, driving the Cybertruck is really pleasant! With no gas engine up front, the angular styling affords a great view forward, especially for low objects ahead like errant children. Normally, this is a huge blind spot obscured by the (mostly) decorative giant hoods and chrome grills of modern pickups. The view out the sides is good, too, and combined with the glass roof and positively enormous windshield, the Cybertruck actually feels pretty airy from the inside. It’s not what you’d expect, given its armoured-personnel-carrier styling.
But can it truck?
Tesla clearly made preserving the concept’s wild look a priority, and concessions to that styling are positively everywhere inside and out. There’s the humongous front mono-wiper for the huge front glass; the buttons on the door pillars that act as door handles; and the lack of a rear window when the bed cover is in place.
Inside, it’s much more typical Tesla fare than the outside. Up front we have the central touchscreen, which controls everything from the wipers to the headlights to the ride height. It even houses the controls for Park, Reverse, Neutral, and Drive! There is no haptic feedback from the screen, and no physical buttons for anything other than the hazard lights. (And this last one presumably only because it’s federally mandated.)
You don’t even have a turn-signal stalk! Like a Ferrari, the turn signals are two buttons mounted on the wheel itself. Unlike Ferrari, which logically places one on the left side and one on the right, Tesla stacks the two buttons on the left. with one on top and one below. Good luck figuring which is which as you turn the wheel while driving at night! Otherwise, the interior is really quite charming. You have wireless phone charging, American-sized cup holders, and seating space front and rear is ample.
It really is ideally suited for the suburban pickup-truck owner. It’s much faster than a gasoline-powered truck. Our dual-motor tester was as fast as a psycho Hellcat-powered Ram TRX, and that’s before we even discuss the tri-motor Cyberbeast. The handling is absolutely the best I have experienced from a pickup, and the manoeuvrability is second to none. It’s also quiet and spacious, and the ride is excellent.
That said, you may have some complications when it comes time to do actual truck stuff.
When the Cybertruck concept debuted in 2019, it promised that it could carry 3,500 lbs in the bed (a space Tesla calls “the vault”). Well, fast-forward five years and that claim has officially dropped to 2,500 lbs on the two-motor, and even less on the heavier tri-motor. But the truth is even worse than that. Tesla cheekily includes the passenger compartment and the frunk in its payload rating. How much can you actually place in the bed? The answer is 1,310 lbs, or about 37% of what was originally promised.
The proposed 6.5-ft bed has shrunk to a six-foot bed, and even that carries a disclaimer. Measured at the floor, the Cybertruck’s cyber-bed is 6.0 ft by 4.25 ft (1,828 mm by 1,295 mm). That’s enough to haul sheets of 4×8-foot plywood, provided you flag it and hang the last three inches past the open tailgate. However, the forward wall of the bed is not vertical — it slopes inwards. So you could not, for example, place a 6×4.25-foot cube in the bed. There is also a sub-floor cargo area underneath the bed, like you’d find in a Honda Ridgeline.
The bed itself is accessed by opening a motorized bed cover. This cover is strong enough for an adult to walk on, and serves the aerodynamic purpose of keeping the airflow close to the vehicle rather than sending it tumbling around like a typical open truck bed. This part does actually work, and the Cybertruck has a coefficient of aerodynamic drag substantially lower than a conventional pickup. However, the cover completely obscures your rear view when deployed, and is the reason the Cybertruck has no rear-view mirror.
The tailgate has an electronic release and is damped, but it must be closed manually with your soft, Bitcoin-trading hands.
Will the Cybertruck be the new darling of the fabled “real truck user?” I doubt it. And it doesn’t really matter. Contractors will continue to buy V8 base-trim trucks to use and abuse, because they can be bought for half the price of a Cybertruck. But the Cybertruck nails its core audience: suburban dudes who love the idea of big trucks.
Tomorrow’s dystopia — today!
The Cybertruck debuted in November of 2019, the same month and year in which the 1982 movie Blade Runner was set. Blade Runner is a recurring muse for Musk. If you haven’t seen the film, it imagines a world where unchecked capitalism have irreversibly destroyed Earth’s ecology. Billionaires yearn to escape to Mars, and artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to humanity. I know it’s a far-out concept, but just try to picture this totally fictional reality.
And just as Blade Runner imagined a darker vision for the future of America, the Cybertruck is somewhat ominously designed for a darker vision of the present. It has a (dubiously functional) bio-weapon defense mode, bullet-resistant doors, and styling that according to Musk looks like “an armoured personnel carrier from the future.” In this context, driving the Cybertruck seems a bit, well, antisocial.
During my time with the Cybertruck, absolute strangers made strong assumptions about my politics and beliefs. And they varied, too. Some assumed I was part of the Californian yogourt brigade for driving an EV; others assumed I was a God-and-guns type because the Cybertruck is so darling to right-wing commentators. If you drive this truck, people are going to assume things about your person, and you may not like what those things are.