I do not like Elon Musk or the Tesla Cybertruck, and if that’s news to you, I hope you enjoy your first day on Jalopnik. I won’t pretend the Model S isn’t the most important car of the 21st century because it just is, but Musk and the Cybertruck are hot garbage. The great thing about Jalopnik, though, is that we’ve never pretended to be objective. We share our personal opinions and admit we have biases. Consumer Reports, on the other hand, works to be as unbiased as possible. So what do they think of the Cybertruck?
So far, Consumer Reports’ testers haven’t had time to put the Cybertruck through its full battery of more than 50 tests, but the truck it ordered back in December 2019 has finally arrived carrying a price of $102,000, and the staff have been familiarizing themselves with the Cybertruck enough to have a number of initial impressions after 2,000 miles behind the wheel. And they go beyond the obvious flaws such as bad visibility, distracting controls and a body that’s hard to clean or keep clean.
Since the truck arrived, they’ve found several things they like, including how it hides its size both on the highway and on twisty roads, its acceleration and braking, the forward visibility, bed storage, motorized tonneau cover and comfortable seats.
That said, they’ve also noticed a few downsides, such as “everything else about visibility,” the way the steering combines with the bad visibility to make the truck difficult to maneuver, how unpredictably variable the steering is and the terrible camera situation. Consumer Reports’ testers also dislike the giant, floppy windshield wiper, the weird motor noise they experience between 30 and 40 mph, all the limitations on washing it, how badly it absorbs jolts from potholes or highway expansion joints, the missing features, the delivery experience and the amount of attention it gets.
Because it’s a Tesla, it also has issues you deal with in other Teslas, such as the steering yoke, almost all the controls being buried in the infotainment screen and the lack of traditional turn signal stalks and door handles. Also, because it’s a Tesla, they’ve already had several issues. In fact, it arrived showing an error code for steering alignment that the Delivery Center insisted wouldn’t impact performance. Regenerative braking, which you aren’t supposed to be able to turn off, randomly stopped working on one trip. The windshield wiper occasionally starts wiping even when it’s not raining.
And while it’s not an issue with the truck itself, the Delivery Center sent Consumer Reports onto the lot to find its own Cybertruck, and when they eventually located it, it needed to be charged, washed and given a software update.
We’re looking forward to the final results of Consumer Reports’ long-term test, but for now, this preview will have to do. And if it’s after 3:00 p.m. when you’re reading this, you can also check out the video below.