I wrote about Tesla a couple of times in November 2021, once taking the piss because they were sending out incomplete cars due to the chip shortage and the other stating that I think that battery electric vehicles (BEV) aren’t the way forward, but hydrogen is.
Today I got to spend a little time in London with the new Cybertruck, and I’m glad I did. I’d watched the unveiling a few years back and despite the glitches in the presentation, I was sold. I thought “Wow, that is beautiful!”. I’ve seen it being pumped on social media and it has a cult following. I sort of got swept along with it, and was interested enough to take a day out and drive up to London to have a look (I also got to drive the new Model 3 Highland). I’m glad I did. Since I’ve got home, I’ve reflected on the day and the experience, and this is what I think;
On walking into the room, the first thing that strikes is that it is bloody huge – far too big for UK roads. There’s no way I would want to drive something that’s larger than the huge Ford pickups over here, even with rear wheel steer. I could immediately see this is likely to be the biggest issue.
In terms of safety, I would imagine that if you were to collide with another vehicle, they are the one that is going to have the problem, it’s like a tank. Knocking the front of it with my fist made me realise how solid it was, where the bonnet meets the wing and the front plate there’s a corner where the three panels meet and it is a bloody sharp angle with no give at all. Even at slow speeds, it would pop a pedestrians skull like a melon. It made me shudder.
It has three motors, so has race car performance. This thing moves, really moves. It’ll leave virtually every performance car standing.
The load space on the rear is far too small to be of any real use, so it leads one to wonder who would want it. I think I have a fair idea already; Celebrities, ‘Names’, the well heeled and so on. It has no real practical use, so will be used in much the same way that Range Rovers etc are; for looking the part, flaunting money/image, the school run, and ensuring the occupants safety and to hell with everyone else.
There’s not a lot more to say other than:
It’s an impractical vehicle, that is far too big, far too fast, and unsafe for all other road users. What could possibly go wrong? Doesn’t take much working out, does it?
The only positive is that in its current form, I think that it would unlikely get approval for use on UK roads.
If I saw someone driving one over here, I would seriously pity them, their life must be deficient in some way and I’m sure that’s not the reaction that they were hoping to achieve.
