Just how tough is a Cybertruck—and how does it measure up against a more traditional truck?
Cody Detwiler, who hosts the good old boy DIY and cars channel WhistlinDiesel, decided to test the Cybertruck in a video in the most comprehensive way possible: by driving the Cybertruck over hills, old pipes, and into other trucks, then testing Elon Musk’s claim the car was an “armored personnel carrier of the future” by rigging it up with C4 explosives.
Oddly, the most damage came from slamming all the doors.
Detwiler pitted the Tesla vehicle against a Ford F-150, and while the Cybetruck outperformed Ford’s machine in a few ways, it turned out that the Ford was able to keep clunking along a little more than the new-fangled machine after all was said and done.
The first test for the Cybertruck was merely getting it started—Detwiler had to drive over a half hour to the nearest charging station where he struggled initially to get the truck juiced up because he didn’t have the app set up. A call to customer service eventually got everything worked out, but it was a knock against the Cybertruck and in favor of the Ford, which was already fueled and ready to go.
Once the Cybertruck managed to get going though, there were a few points in its favor. In a head-to-head race, the Cybertruck managed to accelerate much faster and quickly left the Ford in the dust. The Cybertruck was also able to offroad much more nimbly and comfortably, not jolting Detwiler and his cameraman around as they tested it by powering over concrete pipes to stimulate potholes. The Cybertruck also managed a speedbump challenge with much smoother handling than the Ford.
The Ford, in fact, got itself stuck trying to drive over the concrete pipes and had to be hooked up to the Cybertruck to be towed to safety.
The Cybertruck managed to pull it out, but not before the its tow hitch receiver snapped off its back bumper. That was a heavy knock against the Cybertruck for Detwiler, who pointed out that while the Cybertruck is rated to tow 11,000 pounds, a Ford F-150 weighs in at just over two tons, less than half that.
After that, the Cybertruck continued to underperform Dewilter’s standards. A test of the two trucks racing through mud saw the Cybertruck stuck much sooner.
And after launching off a hill and shattering the Cybertruck’s windshield, Dewilter had trouble getting the vehicle’s touchscreen to work, which is essential for its operation.
To investigate the problem he opened up the engine and found what he called “two stacked washers on top of a piece of duct tape with a missing bolt” left inside seemingly at random,
At this point, the Cybertruck wasn’t able to drive anymore, and Detwiler brought it into a garage for further testing, which included slamming all its doors as hard as possible. Those slams didn’t do any favors for the Cybertruck, causing enough damage to the interior panel to bust the doors completely.
“It’s the same thing as a Model 3, you slam the door hard enough, the entire panel comes off,” Detwiler said after testing the front driver’s door, which wasn’t able to close afterward. All the other doors responded the same way.
“There it goes. The whole door just ripped off,” Detwiler said.
The Ford’s doors didn’t do much better though, with some interiors breaking off and the door windows shattering pretty badly after being slammed.
Testing the Cybertruck’s accelerator pedal was even more bad news for the Tesla. In April, the company recalled about 4,000 trucks over problems with the pedal, which got dislodged when “high force” was applied.
“That’s horrible, that’s like the most important part of the truck,” Detwiler said after testing to see if he could break the pedal off by slamming down hard on it with his foot a few times. Meanwhile, the Ford truck’s pedal held despite Dewilter going to town on it.
Detwiler also tested the Tesla truck’s front trunk, or “frunk,” to see if it would slice off his fingers. One Cybertruck owner went viral in May for a video where the frunk sliced various vegetables before closing painfully on his fingers. In theory the sensors on the frunk are supposed to stop it from closing on you.
Detwiler’s first attempt with a glass ended with it shattered.
And when he introduced his fingers into the mix, things quickly became chaotic as the hood closed on them and wouldn’t let go.
“It went down but then it locked,” Detwiler explained once he finally got his fingers out.
A pack of C4 explosives made the Cybertruck look better. Musk once claimed the Cybertruck would essentially be a person’s individual tank of the dystopic future.
But despite blowing a heavy dent into the Cybertruck’s tailgate, it fared better than the Ford F-150, which had a hole blasted through its own tailgate. Explosives on the door of the Ford also produced a dramatic hole, which the Cybertruck was able to resist.
But at the end of the day, Detwiler said, the Ford truck fared better because the Cybertruck was simply no longer able to run.
Despite avoiding the cosmetic destruction the Ford was subject to, the Steer-By-Wire driving mechanism that the Cybertruck uses wasn’t able to withstand the abuse Dewilter put it through. In that system, there’s no actual mechanical link between the steering wheel and the wheels, which in theory makes the wheel more responsive and reduces physical effort on the driver’s part, as long as it isn’t put through a WhistlinDiesel test.
“There are critical failures on the Cybertruck that need to be addressed,” Detwiler concluded. “There’s memes everywhere about it.”
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