The Cyber truck was announced 4 years ago.
I've gotten married and had 2 kids since then,
but today we get the final specs of what the Cyber truck is at launch.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
For the past 4 years Tesla has been hyping up this
Cybertruck like it's the dawn of a new age, saying things
like it can float on water or has a pneumatic suspension to tap into for air tools,
transparent metal on the windows, costs $39,000 or has a 500 mile range,
not to mention the cyber quad and the extendable tailgate ramp.
But it turns out all of those things are just hype, and
what we got delivered at the launch event is actually an incredibly reasonable machine,
very comparable to the other
electric trucks that have been on the market for years.
And don't get me wrong, it's not a bad thing.
The Cyber truck is still an extremely, extremely impressive vehicle.
But falling from that pinnacle of hypothetical hype before the event,
To the reality of what was actually delivered at the event,
It was just an extremely tall precipice from which we all had to plummet.
So let's look through the hoopla for a minute, forget what
we've been told, and have a realistic conversation.
The Cybertruck as it stands right now does have some major advantages over the competition.
And as a truck owner and a Rivian owner, I am jealous about a few things.
I'll start with thing number one that I'm jealous of, and that's the stainless steel body.
I think the biggest flaw in my Rivian is actually this rear quarter panel.
Yeah, this seamless design looks cool extending up from the
back edge of the bed up over the top of the cab, but if
this aluminum panel on my Rivian gets dinged and needs to
be replaced, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars since the whole truck and
top glass need to be taken apart just to replace the panel.
Not cool.
With the Cybertruck however, it is far more durable with basically the invincible body of a tank.
For example, I'm here with my friends over at Oshka.
They use a lot of nitrogen for laser cutting and they have
liquid nitrogen that we can play around with to see what
happens to steel and stainless steel at extremely cold temperatures.
Metals have different properties.
The stamped steel in regular vehicles is less expensive,
but corrodes or rusts very easily.
And when subject to the extreme temperatures of negative
300 degrees Fahrenheit, like liquid nitrogen, or what we
would see on Mars or the voids of outer space,
steel shatters like glass.
Shattered like glass.
Shattered like glass no way.
Oh, that is too cold.
Look at that.
I had no idea steel was that fragile.
That is nuts.
Alright, let's try stainless.
Stainless steel however, is incredibly corrosion resistant,
does not rust, and does not need to be painted.
And it can apparently withstand the inhospitable voids of outer space just fine.
Once the smoke stops coming out, we know the metal is to temperature.
The smoke has slowed down.
This one is stainless steel.
That's crazy.
The stainless steel is bent and intact and has not shattered like glass.
That's incredible.
This is a 304 stainless steel, very similar to the alloy
used on the Starship rocket and the Cyber truck.
At first I thought the Cybertruck would be super heavy,
contributing to the less than advertised range at the launch event,
you know, because of the bullet proof armoring.
But it turns out the Cybertruck, while being bigger than my
Rivian, is lighter than my Rivian.
The Cyber truck is 6,843 lbs while the rivan is 7,148
and I think that has to do mostly with the battery construction.
See the Cybertruck is using this, a 4680 cell manufactured by Tesla directly.
There are 1,366 of these inside of a Cybertruck, giving it 123 kilowatt hours worth.
And you might be thinking to yourself, hey Jerry, is there
a brand new Cybertruck out there right now missing a battery?
Rivian, on the other hand, uses a much smaller cell.
It's called a 21700 and there are 7,777 of these.
That's like 7 times as many cells as the Cybertruck.
Rivian has more metal casings, more soldering, more metal
bus bars, and more potential points of failure, and more
importantly, more weight. And I think it's the batteries
that make my Rivian weigh more than an armored Cybertruck.
Tesla owning their whole supply chain make me think that
the current higher than expected
cyber truck pricing is temporary,
And once they ramp up and get caught up with all the pre-orders,
we'll see some drastic price cuts like they've done in all their other vehicles.
But that's probably like three years from now, so feel free to at me in 2027.
But let's get back to the stainless steel, since it is
scientifically legitimate and the additional armored weight is obviously not an issue.
The shape of the Cybertruck, however, is an issue, not from
an aesthetic polygon point of view, but from a utility perspective.
The slope sides of the beds can't hold a toolbox or side boxes.
And more importantly, the reason Tesla use an excavator to
show off the 2,500 pound bed capacity in their promo video
is because a Bobcast skid-steerer tractor, which is far
more common on farms or landscaping companies, can't
properly load the bed over diagonally slanted sides.
Tractors will have to lift higher and drop loads farther if
someone decides to use their Cyber truck like an actual truck.
Also from a utility perspective rivan has a dedicated storage spot for the spare tire in the bed of the truck.
The Ford Lightning also has an included spare underneath the truck.
But with the Tesla Cybertruck, if you want a spare, you
lose the entire bed and you got to ratchet strap that thing down.
It's not convenient and you lose all the space that makes a truck a truck.
Also I got to get this off my chest, Elon said this about the glass.
[Elon]- You don't have to worry about like rocks hitting the glass and cracking the glass.
This glass is basically rock proof.
[zack] - Smartphone manufacturers have been telling us forever that their glass is the most durable,
the most shatter resistant, the most shock proof glass ever made, but it's all lies.
Glass is glass and glass breaks every time.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
Another thing I'm jealous of of the Cybertruck is the 9.6 kilowatt hour
240 volt plug in the back of the bed.
That would have been extremely helpful while welding my bunker.
Powering an RV or charging up electric sports Vehicles like the tigga Orca or the electric snowmobile.
Both of which, I've made videos about if you're curious.
I plan on getting one of the electric snowmobiles myself
and using my truck as a charging station would be really appealing.
My Rivian has 4 120 volt outlets I think, which isn't very
helpful with the big boy toys or big boy tools, but it does have an air compressor.
The Cybertruck has 4 or 5 outlets with that 240 volt plug in the back.
The Ford Lightning, however, has 11 outlets with that same
9.6 kilowatt hours of power and a 240 volt plug as well.
And both the Cybertruck and the Lightning can act as whole home backups,
which is also extremely appealing.
My Rivian can definitely not, so I am jealous of those features.
Another bonus with the Cybertruck, if it's not a lie, is the battery range extender,
which Rivian also has a patent for but is not yet selling.
And I think unless Tesla has a product on the shelf,
we just got to pretend like it doesn't exist.
Don't get me wrong, Tesla has accomplished more than any Audi manufacturer ever,
But they are also an unrestrained hype machine.
The three main players right now, Rivian,
the Cyber truck, and the Ford Lightning, are all within spitting distance of each other,
and all three trucks are miles ahead of their gas powered counterparts...
unless you're a long haul trucker,
which is a completely different ball game.
The last question I have is, what in the world is this
random box on the back of the Cybertruck?
This thing has got to kill the departure angle while off-roading.
And my rivan actively tries to eliminate that curve near the end of the bed,
while Tesla added to it.
So if anyone knows, tell me down in the comments.
I think if Tesla released the Cybertruck at their original $39,000 price point,
It would be the only vehicle on the road,
but that's not what we got.
And it's definitely not the truck to end all trucks that Tesla was hyping it to be.
May be gas powered trucks, it's definitely infinitely better than all of those.
But the cybertruck appears to be on par with all the other electric trucks on the road right now in my opinion.
Ofcourse, I have not driven sat in or even tested a production off-road version of the Cybertruck yet.
I am, however, very curious about the steer-by-wire,
where instead of a steering wheel being directly connected to the front wheels,
We have dual redundant electrically controlled steering motors.
I'm also curious about the four wheel steering
and the towing range with these higher capacity cells.
They can output more energy for longer,
which might change my opinion in the future.
And of course, if Elon wants to show off the Cybertruck's water fording capabilities,
My schedule is incredibly free for that.
At $80,000, the EV truck space is still anyone's game.
I do have one on pre-order and I'll probably still go through with that.
I'll use it as a work truck for my wheelchair manufacturing business.
With sides that flat, if nothing else, it'll make for an excellent billboard.
If you want to see the Cyber truck durability tested in real life,
Hit that subscribe button.
And thanks a ton for watching.
I'll see you around.