Yahoo Autos Tesla Cybertruck's amazing feats lack context and details (so don't get too excited)
I’m not sure if I ever will, but I very much want to drive a Tesla Cybertruck. I mean, look at that thing. Distinctive, weird or just plain ridiculous cars have always been the most interesting cars, and they’re the ones that car enthusiasts most want to drive or learn more about. Doug DeMuro has made a career out of showcasing them. And if the Cybertruck doesn’t qualify as distinctive, weird and just plain ridiculous … well, it sure ain’t normal.
Yet, I also want to drive the Cybertruck because the experience itself should be fascinating. And I don’t just mean staring through the vast, flat windshield over the starkly plain dash. The combination of chassis and drivetrain elements described by Tesla CEO Elon Musk yesterday at the Cybertruck’s delivery event (itself distinctive, weird and just plain ridiculous), is fascinating.
Musk describes the Cybertruck as having the “handling of a sports car.” I haven’t driven it, but I can’t imagine that’ll be the case. It’s far more likely to have the handling of absolutely nothing else. How could it not? It’s as wide as a Ford F-150, but 6 inches shorter in length. It weighs nearly 7,000 pounds when most trucks are in the upper 5,000 range. Sports cars these days are in the 3,000s, maybe 4,000s. It then has the low center of gravity afforded by its gargantuan (and gargantuanly heavy) battery pack. It also has all-terrain tires, which sports cars don’t tend to have. Unless named Dakar.
Then there’s those chassis and drivetrain elements I mentioned. Every Cybertruck has rear-wheel steering (RWS), typically an option on large, upper-crust luxury cars as well as some sports cars, including the Porsche 911. By turning the rear wheels in the opposite direction as the fronts, it significantly reduces the vehicle’s turning circle, increasing its agility around corners, and generally making it feel like a smaller vehicle. That’s a big deal for a big vehicle like the Cybertruck.
But it’s not the biggest deal. That’ll be the steer-by-wire system, which to me, explains why Tesla came up with its controversial yoke in the first place (it just jumped the gun by putting it in the Model S first). While the yoke drew unsurprising ire for being a poor fit for conventional steering, as Lexus discovered while concurrently developing its own steer-by-wire system, a yoke is actually well-suited for what’s apparently in the Cybertruck. Assuming it works in the same manner as Lexus Steer by Wire, sensors will determine how much you turned the yoke and send that info to the electric power steering system while the Cybertruck determines how fast it’s going. Those two pieces of info are then used to radically alter the steering ratio and therefore how much you need to steer. More simply, you’ll barely have to turn the yoke at low speeds to make it turn. Instead of turning hand-over-hand multiple times in a U-turn, you’ll likely just bring your right hand from 3 to 10 o’clock.
As the above video shows, it’s really weird and unlikely anything you’ve ever experienced before, but it also seemed to work well in the Lexus. If it’s similar in the Cybertruck, you can see why I think it’ll handle and drive like absolutely nothing else. But that’s not the end of it.
The range-topping Cyberbeast adds a second motor to the rear axle (like the Audi SQ8 E-Tron), therefore granting each wheel its own motor that can spin at different rates. This allows for what’s called torque vectoring, or the outside rear wheel spinning faster than the inside one to push the rear end around a corner and reducing understeer. It’s indeed a boon for handling, as we’ve seen in various all-wheel-drive cars, most notably those by Acura.
Add all that up, and the Cybertruck could be just as wild to drive as it is to look at. I wanted to hear a lot more about those elements, but unfortunately, Tesla doesn’t hand out press materials and doesn’t go into greater detail in its consumer website, either. Musk also spent a lot of time, assisted by a pre-made video presentation, going on about the many amazing Cybertruck feats of strength. That’s where it lost me, because so many were completely bereft of context.
I’m sure many non-car media outlets will parrot these capabilities as if they are unique and incredible (and maybe they are!), but won’t dig deeper to see if they are in fact distinctive for new vehicles in 2023, whether the provided footage/info tells only a sliver of the full story, or if it was just plain-old misleading. Here are some of those examples.
Rollover
“Because the center of gravity is so low, it doesn’t roll over,” Musk said while video played showing a rollover test conducted at 16 mph (according to a graphic on the screen) whereby the Cybertruck laterally slides off a sled and lands with both left wheels in a sand pit. It does not in fact rollover.
Perhaps this is an incredibly common test in the automotive industry. Perhaps this seemingly random speed of 16 mph is the common industry standard. Or maybe Musk is exaggerating and it totally would’ve flipped ass over tea kettle at 20 mph. Who knows! The problem is the utter lack of context here, including how other vehicles of various kinds would perform.
We in the car media see footage of random tests like this all the time on new car launches in order to demonstrate certain capabilities. I assume it’s usually in good faith, and it probably is here, too. The trouble is, again, I have no context for it and without context, you can’t exactly use it as evidence for “it doesn’t roll over.” Musk and Tesla certainly can. That’s called marketing. People reporting about the Cybertruck or even those reading about it? Nope!
Crash test
Immediately after that rollover test in that video, footage was shown of the Cybertruck crashing into a seemingly standard crash test barrier. The crowd erupted in applause, which did seem odd. Do they think cars usually accordion from bumper to bumper in crash tests? Explode? Have they seen a crash test recently?
