GET OUT OF THE WAY! The Cybertruck exists! It's real! And the most insane thing you're going to learn today is that its exterior is actually the least outrageous just part of Tesla's newest creation. [You may also learn that Jason is off his meds.] [Hey, nice shoes, Marty.] If you look at that shape and think, man, that is a middle finger to The Establishment, just wait 'till you find out what's underneath. We've got a lot to cover, so let's jump right in! We know you want to get to the Cybertruck so
I'll make this as quick as I can [at the risk of getting fired] This video is brought to you by the Hagerty Drivers Club, which includes a subscription to our award-winning magazine, 24/7 flatbed roadside assistance, and
far more! Join or get more info with the link below! [Phew.] The Cybertruck is what happens
when a kid asks his dad why the future doesn't look like the future... ...and his dad happens to be the richest and most motivated man/child on the planet. Elon Musk's son posed a valid question. The basic design and engineering of a pickup is effectively identical to what it was 70 years ago. Elon's goal was an unconstrained rethink of the pickup truck... with more utility than a regular full-size pickup
truck, ...and driving dynamics to match a Porsche 911. Okay (duh) it doesn't drive like a 911. Might be faster than one, though! That hurts! [Laughter] Well, it's not just faster than a 911, it's definitely faster than that 835-horsepower 4-motor Rivian. Where is he? Welcome back! This weighs 60 lb less than that truck does, despite, by the way, it being 7 inches longer and 4 inches wider. That is unbelievable I mean this left the Rivian for dead — ...despite the fact that this is on, like, mud tires and that's on summer performance tires. Wow. Well, I guess we're going to have to race something with a little more horsepower to beat this Cybertruck. [Yacht screeching to a halt.] Say "goodbye" to the 1000-horsepower Hummer EV! Okay, this means Cybertruck is the quickest
truck ever — both 0 to 60 and through the quarter-mile, period. We were concerned Sonoma Raceway's
sticky VHT-treated surface was not real-world representative, off camera (and DEFINITELY not on public roads) we ran the truck again on regular pavement... ...and the numbers were exactly the same: including 0 to 60 in 2.6
seconds! 2.6! On mud tires. On untreated asphalt! More impressively, it pulled off 2.6-second
runs to 60 even when the battery was below half— no special mode or preheating necessary. And the quarter mile performance barely changed — the slowest run of the day was just 0.3s off, with the battery state of charge (%) in the 30s. That kind of consistency is something new to
EVs. This truck weighs 2,599 lb less than the Hummer EV, which means you'd have to put an original Tesla Roadster in the bed... to make this weigh as much as that... and you'd still be carrying around less battery than that does! That Hummer is a poster child for engineering inefficiency. Efficiency sounds like a boring word, but in all cars, efficiency in engineering pays dividends everywhere: More speed, better handling, lower operating costs, and a lower purchase price. Where electric vehicles are concerned, efficiency is everything, because it means all of those things, plus range. Sloppy engineering results in an even bigger battery pack, which then snowballs into bigger and heavier wheels, brakes and tires, and everything else. There is no limit to the bloat, but the Hummer must be close to it, with the world's largest battery pack. It's nearly twice the size of the Cybertruck's! [Sike! It's a refrigerator!] [Oops.] ...which doesn't need a huge battery pack because of Tesla's obsession with efficiency. According to the EPA, the Cybertruck is nearly twice as efficient as that Hummer EV. ...and when you're cruising on the highway, the single most important factor in efficiency is aerodynamics. That shape that we all saw on the stage four years ago, (i.e. an overgrown refrigerator) is anything but slippery. But once the world saw that shape, there was no changing it. This looks identical to the original concept truck, but it's not. It's roughly 5% smaller and contains numerous ingenious tweaks that kept the shape largely intact, but reduced the drag coefficient by 25%... ...which would be like going from an SUV to a McLaren SpeedTail. It can't match the Rivan's record-breaking Cd but landing between a McLaren F1 and a Bugatti Chiron is not bad at all. There's a focus on efficiency and cost-savings in the battery pack, too. The truck uses 1,366 of these second-generation 4680 cells that Tesla designed, developed, and then produced in-house. These are significantly larger than the original off-the-shelf batteries that Tesla used for the original Roadster, but also the S and the X, ...or even the 2170 cells that Tesla designed together with Panasonic for the Model 3 and Model Y. The 4680s are not only able to to store more energy and release more power without overheating (remember that consistent quarter-mile performance) but they cost far less to produce — and key point here: Tesla makes them itself. Which means you can add the battery pack to Tesla's fully vertically-integrated product I.E Tesla wants to own everything from the battery — to the motor — to the software — to the hardware — to the equipment — to the dealers — to the service centers — to the superchargers — and everything else in the supply chain. The benefits of this aren't just that all the stuff works well together, it's also price. At a time where inflation is making everything more expensive, Tesla has continually dropped the price of its cars — in some cases by tens of thousands of dollars.
[$40,000 OFF!?] The obsession with cost continues to the motors, which are made inhouse. Of the three motors in this truck, only one of them is permanent magnet, unlike the Rivan, which uses four of them. Permanent-magnet motors are more expensive to produce and they require rare earth materials. Induction motors don't. ...and there's another benefit. The two induction motors at the back of this Cybertruck don't require clutches to disengage them. [While cruising. So yes, Cybertruck is FWD when cruising.] No clutch is a good thing because, as Tesla always points out, the best part is no part. And as somebody probably said once, the best voltage is high voltage! The Cybertruck is Tesla's first car to run on 800 volts. You don't have to be an electrical engineering whiz to understand the benefits of high voltage. Luckily, we know another Jason who is an engineering whiz. Okay let's see if I can keep this simple enough for even you to understand, Jason. [BURN!] Current is bad. Money is good! So, if you look at the equation, power equals
voltage times current. Well, if you double your voltage and keep power the same, you now use half the current. Well, current determines the size of the wires you use. The lower the current the less wiring you need, thus material saved, thus you've saved money! Again, money is good! Now it is worth mentioning, 800 volts is nothing new in terms of electric cars. Porsche did it in 2019 with the Taycan. But there is something no one has ever done before: Tesla quadrupled the low voltage side of this car. Meaning anything that would have otherwise run on 12 volts now runs on 48 volts. This cuts the current needs in four — meaning this car needs only a quarter as much copper, saving Tesla money that it can then pass on to you. The last time the industry bumped up cars' voltage was from 6 to 12 volts, also because of growing current needs. This happened 70 years ago. 1955! And the industry's been stuck there since. But think about how small the electrical demands were on a 1950s car versus one today! The industry has been trying to switch to a 48v architecture for literal decades, and we've seen a 48-volt component here or there, but thanks to incredible dysfunction, neither the suppliers nor the car companies could get the switch done. Tesla finally had enough. And so it sent a pamphlet to the CEO of every other car company entitled, "How to Design a 48-Volt vehicle." The balls! The primary beneficiary of the 48-volt system is steer-by-wire. For the very first time ever on a production car, there is no physical connection between the steering wheel and the front wheels.
[The Nissan system still had a steering column!] ll I have to do is turn the car on and now I can steer. The front wheels are turned using a pair of redundant electric motors mounted directly to the steering rack. The rears are turned with a third motor, and together, the three motors can output ~5 horsepower [3.75 kW.] Running 5 horsepower on 12 volts would send three times the current across the wires as your average 1970s house could handle! [300 Amps!] HOUSE! The Cybertruck might be the size of a house, but it has a turning radius roughly the size of a Model S. The only thing this wheel is connected to is a bunch of sensors and a force-feedback unit. I'm not sure I'd want this in a sports car [HELL no!] but in something the size of a school bus, why not? Completely by-wire steering is another thing that engineers have been dreaming about for decades. Lexus is working on it right now but no one's had the balls to put it into production until now.
[Again, Nissan's system had a physical backup. Also, it sucked.] The benefits are clear: at higher speeds the steering slows way down and is normal. At lower speeds, well, it's just one turn, lock-to-lock. Half turn this way... Half turn that way... It's wild! The computer interprets your request on where you want to go, and then it decides how much steering, front and rear, to get you there. ...even if "there" is a go-kart track and you're in something the size of an apartment building. [zOMG it's Randy Pobst!] 3.... 2.... 1... [These idiots are not seriously going to...] [...oh my god, they have a death wish.] Look how easy this is! If I was in a traditional truck right now, my hands would be all blurry. This would be miserable! I'd be a sweaty mess! [As opposed to your non-sweaty mess, Jason?] Hey look at this! Randy can't even come close to keeping up! Oh look he's waving to say, "hello!" [LOOK AT THE TRUCK TAKE OFF! That's real!] I genuinely thought it was going to take a long time to get used to the steering, but no! I'm already there! Look, your brain remaps how
fast it is... and just look at that, perfect apex! ...beautiful track-right-out... ...on the power in a straight line... ...braking in a straight line... this is easy!
[WHAT THE F*∞K DID OUR HERO RANDY POBST JUST SAY?!] And everything here is at least double-redundant — triple-redundant for all the critical stuff. So if two sensors disagree about
something, it can use use the third as a tiebreaker. By the way I'm not worried about a failure and neither should you be.
[Of course you're not worried, you're dumb enough to do 80 mph on a go-kart track in a 6700-lb truck. #smdh] Commercial Jets have all been fly-by-wire since the 1980s.
[Well, not ALL of them.] The first was the Airbus A320, which went into production in 1988... ironically, the same year as the BMW 750i went into production with the world's first throttle by wire. This is a known technology. Every car on sale right now is throttle-by-wire... ...and the entire industry has been trending towards brake-by-wire for years. Ever heard of a failure? Me neither. What's crazy is that Tesla chose the Cybertruck to debut the 48-volt and steer-by-wire. They didn't need to do anything. Because a literal million people plunked down deposits on this thing based solely on how it looked. Tesla didn't actually need to make any other breakthroughs... ...the brushed stainless steel body alone was enough to grab the world's attention. Sound familiar? Hey Doc, it was so good karting with you. [Awkward!] Come on, listen, these two cars have one very obvious thing in common. They do. They both were designed from the outside in! Exactly! The DeLorean was originally intended to have
a mid-engine rotary, but it ended up with a rear engine V-6, and that had to fit under the same body shell. Must have been a nightmare for the engineers. Yeah, and there's something else. Aaaalso that they had have in common. Very obvious! Four years from the debut of the prototype to the beginning of production? Yep, bingo! That's it! Same story here. ...and there's something else that you can see with your plain eyes that's also a similarity... Well, this was originally called the DMC-12 because of its planned $12,000 price... Right! That didn't happen! By the time it went on sale it was twice that! Same thing happened here! When we first saw this, Tesla said it would start at $40,000, but we're seeing the first one and it's over $100k. It's more than twice that. ...but it's worth it, because it's bulletproof! It is? ...but is it Randy-proof? [HOLYFNRCK I GUESS NOT!] I didn't think it would dent. It wasn't supposed to but that's a refrigerator, you blind old bat.
[Seriously how is he so fast and so blind at the same time?] There's the car.
[Christ, someone get the man a new prescription.] Daaayumn! Told you it was bulletproof! Randy: that's the most hooligan thing I've ever done.
[BS. We've seen you in a rental car, Randy.] This brings us [and the quivering slow-mo moron] to the exoskeleton, made out of a material Tesla calls "HFS." ...or Hard Fffff...(exactly what you think it is) Steel... ...a custom alloy developed in-house. On a traditional car, the body panels are floppy metal. They're just to make the shape and not much else. The outside of the Cybertruck is so strong that it becomes the structure. in fact, Tesla says the skin is so tough that it doesn't even need side-impact door beams. ...and that would make me really nervous, except [ahem.] [FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS!] Are you kidding me? We're talking about Tesla here! This is so nuts. So, this is a 3100-lb cart (1,400 kg)... and it just hit the side of the Cybertruck at 33.5 mph... and you're looking at it it's barely deformed. And that's because of the stainless steel exoskeleton. In fact, it didn't even break the (front) door glass. All it did was just flop the wiper over. Bloop! After a crash-test that totals most cars, the Cybertruck would be back on the road with two new doors, airbags, and some trim. Don't forget this is the company who made the Model S, ...which not only broke the record for the safest vehicle ever tested, ...but was so strong it actually broke the testing equipment... ...and then broke the scoring system by earning 5.4 stars out of a possible 5.0. The Model X, too, broke its test when they couldn't get it to roll over to measure rollover safety. Then, the Model 3 beat them both, becoming the safest car ever tested... and then, the Y beat it, too. We haven't seen any frontal crash tests, but if Tesla's safety record is any indication, the Cybertruck's strong structure and heavy weight will make this one of the world's safest vehicles to be inside of. Insssssiiiidee of. Do I really think this is going to pass those European pedestrian-impact safety standards that make everything look like a blob? No! But I don't think that's any better. I don't want to get hit by either of these. Owww.
[We bleeped the next word. Jason did, in fact, rip his shirt and cut his forearm on the fender.] Did Tesla really have have to make a new pickup... ...in the form of a post-apocalyptic, bulletproof stainless steel, squared off cockroach, ...with sharp edges that'll slice your finger open anytime you go near it? No! Do I love the way it looks? No. I hate it. And then I love it.
And then I hate it
Then I love it. ...but it definitely does answer Elon's son's question about why the future doesn't look like the future. Even if the future requires a 4-foot-long wiper blade... and a tonneau cover strong enough to support support an overgrown man-child. [EVERYONE: He is out of his mind.] This a prototype Cybertruck, and so the jury will be out for some time... on whether the build quality is any good once the factory is up and running. But the cabin's design is typical Tesla-minimalist, and it's well-done. Since the Cybertruck's main structure is formed by two of the largest aluminum castings ever made, Tesla quotes structural rigidity greater than that of a current Porsche 911.
[Ladder-frame pickups are NOT rigid, but also obviously not zero.] No squeaks or rattles. It's completely silent in here, thanks also to the Gorilla Glass. It's a hell of a car. It drives really well, the suspension is great, ...makes you wonder why steering wasn't always like this. It's smooth. It's fast as hell. It does everything well. The only thing really unconventional about this driving experience (other than the dashboard big enough to land an Airbus on) is the steering. ...and I think you'll get used to that, but it's pretty disorienting at first, in parking lots. That said, the other thing that's disorienting is there's no rearview mirror, because you can't see anything out the back.
[The CT does come with a mirror, but it's removable.] Of course, you could drive around with the tonneau cover down, and you'd be able to see something. But it would cost ~10% in range. I guess that's one place where a conventional pickup truck shape has a big benefit. But is usability what really matters in this truck? It's going to become a polarizing status symbol parked in the driveway of every Lamborghini owner as their Suburban-Assault Daily Driver. ...but very much like a Lamborghini, there's real, genuine substance baked into this thing. ...and it's a time machine.
[Okay, he's clearly off his meds.] Allow me to explain by reading you a review of the the Tesla Cybertruck published 36 years ago in Car and Driver. [WHUUUT?] "Meet the closest thing to a street-legal Tiger Tank known to man. "Never before have we driven a vehicle that has turned so many heads, "blown as many minds, "freaked as many citizens, "or been as much insane outrageous fun. "Onlookers took hundreds of candid photos. "As automobile design has come increasingly to acknowledge the laws of aerodynamics, "cars have begun to look like cloned amoebas. "Enter a machine so larger than life, "so outrageous, "so hypertrophied**
[Jason mispronounced this word because the real pronunciation would make him seem even crazier." "...that comparing it with a normal automobile "would be akin to measuring the Palace of Versailles against a Suburban split-level." Of course the Cybertuck didn't exist in 1987, but the Lamborghini LM002 did. ...and I just tricked you by reading an excerpt from its review. It's the same story as the Cybertruck It has four doors and a pickup bed. It also weighs 6,800 lb. It, too was the quickest pickup ever. Sports-car fast! This one with a 48-valve V-12 and a 5-speed dogleg manual. It was a spectacle! It's ironic that a truck that'll probably appeal to Lamborghini buyers, sitting there looking all like the original DeLorean time machine, is actually a blast from the past itself. Everything said about the LM002 applies to the Cybertruck. It's certainly the most insane thing on the road. And it's definitely going to piss a lot of people off because of it. ...but the engineering story behind the Cybertruck? Well, that's something that no car company from the past could have ever pulled off. The Ford F-150 Lightning is a genuinely great vehicle, but it's nothing more than an electric take on a 70-year-old design. The R1T is one step ahead. What Rivian did was take the conventional pickup truck shape, and then make it to the best of modern standards. It's a brilliant piece of engineering. Tesler went one step further. They threw out the conventional pickup truck design, but then started from scratch with chassis
construction, the unpainted stainless steel, the steer-by-wire, the 48-volt electrical system. It's all from scratch. It's all brand new. ...and it's all better.
[From an engineering perspective.] It really is... Truck 2.0 I approached the Cybertruck thinking it was a gimmick. A bad joke. Just like everyone else on the Internet, I saw the fingerprints, and I saw the misaligned body panels.
[Not to mention the botched break-proof glass incident.] What I didn't know was there was so much substance behind this shape. Actually, the shape is irrelevant. And the sad part is is you've already made up your mind about the Cybertruck based on the way it looks. [ADMIT IT!] So did I. So did everyone else. ...but that's not fair to this thing. It's an insult to judge it by how it looks.
[I think he just called it hideous.] And now we know why it took four long years for Tesla to get it out the door... ...they've been busy reinventing everything but the wheel. The crazy thing is that Tesla did this once before and apparently didn't learn its lesson. Elon once admitted that if he had known how difficult the Model X was going to be to engineer... with its Falcon Doors, glass roof, and Monopost Seats, he would have never done it. And so the next SUV was the almost entirely conventional Model Y. That conventionality paid off. The Model Y is now the bestselling car in the world. Tesla sells more of them every few weeks than it sells Falcon-winged Model Xs in a year. If Tesla learned anything from that whole Model X experience, this would have looked like a conventional truck, and would have been easier to build, and Tesla would have sold told more of them to boot. But Elon has his inner child to answer to. [and his actual kid.] And besides, nobody else would have been able to pull this off. The future ain't going to invent itself. FOR AN HOUR OF REAL TALK ABOUT CYBERTRUCK, CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO THE CARMUDGEON SHOW PODCAST!
