CARS OF THE WORLD

Tesla Cybertruck 2023.

Tesla is preparing to release the Cybertruck: a stainless-steel amphibious pickup truck on cool wheels.

Tesla’s long-awaited electric pickup truck will go into production in the middle of next year at the Gigafactory in Texas, with its technical features still seeming unrealistic.

Let’s tell you what’s known from the Tesla Cybertruck so far.

The Tesla Cybertruck premiered in November 2019, then the company promised to start production in late 2021, but failed to fulfill that promise, the start of production has been postponed several times, the current milestone is mid-2023, but without an exact date.

Tesla’s latest investor report for the third quarter of this year indicates that the Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, has begun assembling equipment for production of the Cybertruck.

And Italy’s Idra reported this week that it has prepared the world’s largest press, weighing 9,000 tons, for shipment to the United States, which will «print» the body of the Cybertruck, made of thick, high-strength stainless steel, as it was announced at the premiere.

The body is the most mystical feature of the Cybertruck at the moment: in fact, it is an armored vehicle, which will not be afraid of blows with a sledgehammer and even light firearms, the windows are promised armored.

In theory, such a body could be eternal, but it is not yet very clear how Tesla will certify it and what will happen to passive safety, because it is clear that armored steel and deformation zones that absorb energy upon impact are incompatible things.

Moreover, in September Elon Musk confirmed that the Cybertruck will be amphibious and will be able to cross rivers, lakes and even sea straits on calm water.

This means that the body must be airtight and have a reserve of buoyancy.

Most likely, the wheels will act as propulsors, so the water speed will be low.

The pre-production Cybertruck was first shown earlier this year, it differs from the 2019 prototype in detailing, slightly modified proportions and a large windshield wiper, while the company’s website still shows the prototype.

But the official photos of the production version, which we cite here, surfaced this week in a press release from tuning studio Unplugged Performance.

Unplugged Performance is somewhat of a Tesla court tuning atelier, in the sense that its work is approved by Tesla, and Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen and his wife work directly with Unplugged Performance and offer customization of Tesla electric car interiors.

So this studio has prepared a set of forged wheels for the Cybertruck, it was called Cybrhex, its design was developed by the legendary Sasha Selipanov, a native of Georgia, who has experience in Bugatti, Genesis, Koenigsegg and Lamborghini, participant of numerous collaborations, including with the Swiss startup WayRay, behind which are natives of Russia.

A set of Cybrhex wheels costs from $5,992 to $6,795, but Unplugged Performance will not ship them until the Cybertruck begins production, as the full spec of the pickup is still classified and there is nothing to run the wheels on.

The number of pre-orders for the Cybertruck is in the millions, and there is no price list yet — the prices announced in 2019 cannot be maintained due to high inflation.

Technical specs for the pickup have been removed from Tesla’s website, and apparently there will be adjustments to them as well.

In 2019, it was reported that the three-engine top-end version of the pickup would be able to accelerate to 60 mph (96.56 km/h) in 2.9 seconds and travel more than 800 km on a single charge.

What will actually happen, we can only guess, but in any case, the Cybertruck is one of the main novelties of 2023.