Yahoo Autos What's an old-school guy like me doing with a Tesla Cybertruck?
What’s an old-school guy like me doing with a Tesla Cybertruck?
I’m analog in a digital landscape; carburetion in a fuel-injected world. The Costco gas pumps love me because my collection includes a 1969 Mustang, 1967 F-100, 1977 F-250, 1966 F-100 in the middle of a restomod, and, stepping boldly into Y2K, a 2003 Corvette coupe.
And now, a new Cybertruck.
Like my kids, I won’t pick a favorite. The Vette accelerates, brakes and corners like a performance car should yet glides comfortably over the back roads. The F-250 sits high, rides as smoothly as the old twin I-beam suspension will allow, and I’m not afraid to fill the bed with a load of gravel.
Yet the Cybertruck combines all of that and more.
It’s a big rig, no doubt, at 6,800 pounds and more than 18.5 feet long, but it behaves like a performance vehicle. After about 350 miles and nearly two weeks driving this bizarre-looking creation, I’m smitten. And that’s from a guy who never seriously thought about owning an EV, much less this EV.
That changed in December when I came home after a day on the golf course and my wife greeted me with, “Guess what we’re buying!?” She and our son, a Model Y owner and Tesla fanatic, had been texting throughout the afternoon after he had received an invitation to buy a Foundation Series Cybertruck – a supposedly limited-run model that includes dual motor (600 horsepower) or tri motor (845 hp) all-wheel drive, special interior trim, lifetime connectivity, Tesla’s “Full-Self Driving” hands-free driving system when it becomes available, Foundation Series badging, and a few other add-ons like all-weather floor mats, tie-downs, etc.
Our son had been among the first to place a pre-order when those became available in 2019, and that got him an invite in December. At his stage in life with a growing family, he wasn’t in a position to drop $100,000 on the Foundation Series. But we are and we did after our son reminded us, “You’re not getting younger.”
Technically, he and my wife are owners because his name was on the reservation and Tesla wouldn’t allow more than one other name on the registration. But it’s in my garage, I’ve been driving it, and here are some thoughts after 350 miles:
Order/delivery process
The lack of effective communication with Tesla is my biggest peeve. The information was either wrong, inconsistent, or non-existent. At no time between placing the order in December and receiving the delivery date of May 1 did we have a clear idea of the truck’s status. With an expected delivery of January-March, would we get it early in that window or late? It would have been nice to have an approximate timetable because, you know, we’d like to make plans.
Calls to Tesla and even a visit to the local service center didn’t help. The most common answer was, “They don’t tell us anything.” One day we were told it’s “one stop away” from the service center. A few days after that, “It’s still in Texas.”
You can order a pizza and know what stage of creation and delivery it’s in. I had a vehicle shipped from Arizona to Seattle a few weeks ago and knew its location throughout the journey, including a stop south of Vegas when the driver took a leak. And yet, one of the most technologically advanced companies in the world was having difficulty tracking where our Cybertruck was during the build/transport/delivery process.
When we picked up the Cybertruck on May 1, I was pleasantly surprised that it was clean. I’d seen a few Cybertrucks fresh off the transporters and they looked as if they’d been off-roading, with dirt everywhere on the exterior. Thankfully, my only delivery-day nit was that nobody had touched the dirt-splattered wheel wells.
We inspected it closely for fit/finish and found two burrs on the edges of the stainless steel panels, plus a small scratch on the right quarter panel that, hopefully, will be smoothed out at a service appointment soon. The accelerator pedal cover, subject of a recall in April, had been temporarily secured with a rivet but also sported a couple of unsightly creases from where (I assume) someone put a clamp on it during the recall repair. That cover will be replaced.
What it’s like to drive the Cybertruck
It takes a while to get comfortable with any new car, but the Cybertruck learning curve has been steep, especially for someone driving an EV for the first time.
How do you start it? (Depress the brake pedal.)
How do you shift? (Swipe up to go forward and down for reverse on the left side of the 18½-inch touchscreen. There's another set of shifter controls overhead.)
