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B/F: The Drive Thru #52

Just like Brad's fantasy of Cyber Truck ownership, our cover photo was dreamt up by Microsoft's Co-Pilot/DALL-E based on the content in this episode.

In Episode #52 of the Drive Thru! Break/Fix podcast’s monthly news episode containing automotive, motorsports and random car-adjacent news, we embark on a journey, reviewing some of the “best of” Tesla CyberTruck news through Brad’s car buying experience. Should he? Shouldn’t he? Can he trade this allotment for something else? Tune in to find out!

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

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Showcase: Brad’s CyberTruck buying Journey

Tesla's Cybertruck Could Be A Lot More Expensive Than People Thought, And Some Are Cancelling Their Reservations

One anonymous Cybertruck buyer says Tesla offered them a tri-motor truck for over $100,000  ... [READ MORE]

Tesla Cybertrucks Keep Getting Stuck In Snow

Seems like those factory tires aren't good for much when the flakes start piling up  ... [READ MORE]

YouTuber Takes Tesla Cybertruck On Cross-Country Road Trip, Stops 12 Times To Charge Over 1,340 Miles

From in-car glitches to worse-than-expected efficiency, nothing about this trip sounds fun.  ... [READ MORE]

Tesla Cybertruck Vs. Porsche 911 Drag Race Was Pure Spectacle

The electric Cybertruck beat a gas-powered Porsche 911 Carrera in drag race while towing a 911 Carrera, of course  ... [READ MORE]

Elon Musk: We dug our own grave with the Cyber Truck

 ... [READ MORE]

Tesla Cybertruck owners complain their new vehicles are rusting

 ... [READ MORE]

2024 Tesla Cybertruck vs. Rivian R1T vs. Ford F-150 Lightning: The Only Comparison Test You'll Need

We test the Cybertruck’s mettle against two prime painted-pony rivals and find stark differences and a reality that contradicts some Tesla claims. ... [READ MORE]

WhistlinDiesel Got His Hands On A Tesla Cybertruck And Ford F-150

The future doesn't look bright for the full-size trucks which are going to star in a new video by "the CEO of destruction" ... [READ MORE]

Tesla recalls over 11,000 Cybertrucks over trim detaching and wiper issue

 ... [READ MORE]

You Can Just Peel Open A Cybertruck Like An Orange

With a little effort, a thief in Atlanta, Georgia was able to gain entrance into the incredibly secure Tesla Cybertruck  ... [READ MORE]

**All photos come from the original article; click on the image to be taken to the original article. GTM makes no claims to this material and is not responsible for any claims made by the original authors or their sponsoring organizations. All rights to original content remain with authors/publishers.


Everything you wanted to know about the Cyber Truck but were afraid to ask! 

For a list of all the articles and events referenced on this episode check out the show notes below.

Financing

Lowered Expectations

News

Recalls

Truck Thangs!

Washing & Detailing

Welp!

TRANSCRIPT

Executive Producer Tania: [00:00:00] The Drive Thru is our monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like HPTEjunkie. com, CollectorCarGuide. net, Project Motoring, Garage Style Magazine, The Exotic Car Marketplace, and many others. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of The Drive Thru, look no further than www.

motoringpodcast. net. Click about, and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports The Motoring Podcast Network. Grand Touring Motorsports, our podcast, Brake Fix, and all the other services we provide.

Crew Chief Eric: I guess we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about Tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, didn’t we talk about him enough already?

Crew Chief Eric: Was that

Executive Producer Tania: the Law and Order music? Yep.

Crew Chief Eric: What kind of shenanigans is Elon up to this time? Have you noticed that we have begun to really split hairs on Tesla? I remember when it was just, we would be remiss. And then it became Teslagate, and then it became stupid shit that Elon [00:01:00] does, and now the Cybertruck has its own segment by itself, because it is a spectacle.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: I love how it’s all inclusive. It’s the car, it’s the man, it’s the company, just all rolled up into one.

Crew Chief Brad: There you go, there’s their new slogan, the car, the man, the company. Musk. They should just drop Tesla. They should just be Musk. Are you driving? God, I can’t even say it. Are you driving your Musk? Yes, I got my Musk.

Riding in my Musk.

Crew Chief Eric: What was the name of that perfume in Anchorman where he was like, Musk. Jaguar bottle. He would open it up and it would like smell like hell. Like that’s exactly what I’m thinking here.

Executive Producer Tania: Sex Panther? Was that what it was?

Crew Chief Brad: Musk. But before we dig in to the showcase, I have breaking news. I received an email from Tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: They, uh, hacked your account and have all your personal info.

Crew Chief Brad: They would like

Crew Chief Eric: you to reset [00:02:00] your password.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. There was a security breach and the, no, I’m kidding.

Crew Chief Eric: We found out a little secret when we were doing a

Crew Chief Brad: crossover episode. With one of our guests, Elon Musk snort my hundred dollars up his nose. Is that what happened?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, he must’ve spent it on something because you didn’t get your day one t shirt that you were supposed to get as a reservation holder.

Crew Chief Brad: Did you get it as a reservation holder or after you place your order?

Crew Chief Eric: No, you were supposed to get it when you placed your reservation. Oh, I didn’t get anything.

That’s what we were told. Remember, you were all upset about that.

Crew Chief Brad: It wouldn’t fit me now anyway. I don’t know what happened to my t shirt.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what’s funny is that t shirt might be worth more than that Cybertruck allotment at this point.

Crew Chief Brad: If everybody got one and there’s like millions of people put in orders for Cybertrucks.

Executive Producer Tania: Man, those were some expensive t shirts, 100.

Crew Chief Brad: Where is your order? Have you received Dogecoin? Your limited edition Foundation Series Cybertruck is ready to order. Did

Executive Producer Tania: you say limited edition?

Crew Chief Brad: Limited edition Foundation Series. Cybertruck is ready to order. I have been spending all my time literally 24 7 for the [00:03:00] last month Trying to cancel my order and and just not having any luck Canceling my order because I got in with my deposit on day one So i’m one of like the first couple hundred as an early reservation holder.

You have been invited to order Your foundation series, Cybertruck with early access to delivery. I’m guessing that means 2027, maybe. I don’t know. It says further on that they’re delivering trucks in California and Texas, and they’re delivering as early as 2024. I don’t know, whatever. Warm

Crew Chief Eric: climates. Okay.

Yeah. Well, we’ll get into that. We’ll get into that.

Crew Chief Brad: So yeah, I need to call Tesla and get my a hundred dollars back. That’s what’s going to happen with that. So let’s dive into the showcase. If you haven’t been able to tell, we are talking about all things, Cybertruck. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: right. I am so glad you’re back.

This is going to be a hell of a winter recap. Obviously, congratulations are in order. You had your second son, you know, that’s an awesome big event in your life, but maybe not as big as getting the opportunity

Crew Chief Brad: to

Crew Chief Eric: pick up this Cybertruck.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, yes, yes. [00:04:00]

Crew Chief Eric: So to quote Steven Izzy from our Everything I Learned From Movies episodes, what have we learned about the Cybertruck now that people are taking delivery of these things?

Crew Chief Brad: We’ve learned that they’re available, but they’re not available. Tesla really doesn’t want to sell any because they’re trying to offer you money to buy another Tesla. So you don’t sit around waiting for a cyber truck that may or may not exist. All the ones that are out there running or doing funky things like crashing and weird things like that.

All good things. Let’s start with this. You’ve got that email.

Crew Chief Eric: Does it give you any details? Are you able to go in and maybe spec it out and figure out how much it’s going to cost? Because I’ve heard some rumors about what may be the real price. is for these

Crew Chief Brad: Cybertrucks. So this one’s going to be expensive.

Your Cybertruck will be fully optioned. It will include limited edition laser etched badging, premium accessories, charging equipment with PowerShare home backup hardware, all terrain tires, full self driving [00:05:00] capability.

Executive Producer Tania: Wait, all terrain tires?

Crew Chief Brad: All terrains.

Executive Producer Tania: She

Crew Chief Eric: got hung up on all

Executive Producer Tania: terrain

Crew Chief Eric: tires?

Executive Producer Tania: Wait, what do we mean?

The tires that can’t get up a hill in the woods? Or when there’s like snow?

Crew Chief Brad: Be the ones. I don’t know which all terrain tires they are offering, but they’re probably not Duratrax, which means they’re probably not very good. Don’t ruin it for everybody. But here’s the part I thought Tanya would have honed in on.

Self driving capability.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what I thought too. She got hung up on these all terrain tires. I wasn’t listening

Crew Chief Brad: Full self driving capability that will need to be recalled before I even take delivery. Yeah, because that’s false advertising So maybe I should take this email and just sue tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, the lawsuit’s not over yet That’s why that’s why they can still use it I guess

Crew Chief Brad: but still

Crew Chief Eric: no talk about

Crew Chief Brad: what it costs Well, I can continue to my account.

I haven’t logged into this in like three years, four years, maybe five. When was it first announced?

Executive Producer Tania: Like 15 years ago with that

Crew Chief Brad: steampunk kind of like cyberpunk.

Executive Producer Tania: Wasn’t it in the year before [00:06:00] COVID? The year 2000. And the time before?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it was like in the before times. Yeah. It was like in the November. BC

Executive Producer Tania: before COVID.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Before COVID. I was working at that terrible mortgage company. Oh

Crew Chief Eric: man, that was a while ago then. Yeah, 2019. Jeez, five years since you put this deposit down. And the one thing that makes your particular deposit special is you actually went full in on the tri motor version of this thing. So it is like the upper echelon of Cybertrucks if it ever comes to fruition.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s why it’s the top of the line limited edition. Some or other. Limited

Crew Chief Eric: to

Crew Chief Brad: somebody. Limited to my imagination.

Crew Chief Eric: What I’ve read is They had all these bargain basement prices. Oh, you can get a cyber truck. It’s going to be the cheapest truck in town. Blah, blah, blah. 30, 000. You know, all these numbers that you never sure.

It’s sort of like Christmas time where they double the price and then put it on sale 50 percent off. One of those kinds of deals. But I’m reading over a hundred grand for these things.

Crew Chief Brad: So the all wheel [00:07:00] drive foundation series tri motor. Fully loaded 99, 990 before taxes. Yeah. Well, they lost the tax credit, didn’t they?

So you can’t get that. You can get the cyber beast. I can upgrade if I wanted to, to the cyber beast for 119, 990. Stop playing games. Tesla a hundred thousand dollars or 120, 000 is dropping that 10 off does not make it any better. I apparently had very lofty goals for my income when I put the order in on this truck, I will tell you

Crew Chief Eric: what.

But, but let’s put that in perspective though. We already know that pickup trucks are expensive to begin with, but how much truck, real truck can you buy for a hundred grand these days?

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, you can get a fully optioned out. Diesel 3500 dually or something like that. F 250 King Ranch or something like that.

Crew Chief Eric: Talk about a beast. That’s a real beast compared to this thing. And we’ll get into more of these [00:08:00] specifics of what’s working and what’s not with the Cybertruck here as we’ve learned in doing this research. I’m not even done.

Executive Producer Tania: But wait, there’s more! Call now!

Crew Chief Brad: So yeah, 100, 000 or 120, 000. You can add the range extender for 16, 000.

So it’s 116, 000 or 136,

000

Crew Chief Brad: for any of the tri motor versions. Uh, what percentage APR these days? Car loans are for excellent credits and like the five to 7 percent range, something like that, and it only goes up from there. Still a lot. Well, you financed it for 30 years, like a mortgage.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, when you’re talking six figure cars.

Crew Chief Brad: So, okay. Yeah. The interest rate would be 6. 59%. You can do up to 84 months. With a 4, 500 down payment, your monthly payment for seven years

Crew Chief Eric: on a

Crew Chief Brad: truck that probably won’t last two years is 1, 500. Tesla not only does their own insurance, but I think they do their own financing too.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, they also do some other [00:09:00] financing.

Do you guys remember the Tesla Roadster and the thousand people that put money down on that thing like 10 years ago? If you do the math on that, it’s like a cool quarter million dollars they got tax free.

Executive Producer Tania: What kind of scheme is it? The Like, does it have a name where you get people to put deposits down and you get a million people to put a hundred dollars down and then you use that money to finance yourself and don’t give them anything?

Crew Chief Brad: I believe that’s called a sweepstakes. So this is the Tesla model. We’ve got this great idea. We can’t afford to build it, so we’re going to sell it now, and then we’re going to use the funds from the sale to build it, and then we’re going to come up with another idea, and we’re going to sell that, we’re going to sell the idea, and then use those funds to build this other idea.

Crew Chief Eric: I figured it out. It’s like the Fyre Festival. Everybody putting all this money.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, yes. Some

Crew Chief Eric: people got t shirts. Tesla is the

Crew Chief Brad: Fyre Festival of the automotive world. I love it. Like Eric said, the Ponzi scheme,

Crew Chief Eric: all of it’s vaporware. So how many Tesla [00:10:00] roadsters are going to get built? Do you think,

Crew Chief Brad: well, the Tesla roadsters are funding the cyber truck.

Crew Chief Eric: Can you put your deposit down yet? A thousand people or something put down deposits on those things. And how many years ago was that? We’re talking about the lasers and the cannons and it’s gonna be 0 to 60 in 1. 9 seconds. It’s gonna be the fastest car to play. Remember that episode we did season one, Brad, like five years ago with Bobby Parks.

And he was talking about how they were going to go drag racing with the Tesla Roadster. And I’m like, yeah, okay. I didn’t believe it then. And we’re all cautiously optimistic, but it’s literally been five years. It’s never going

Executive Producer Tania: to

Crew Chief Eric: happen. Well, we said the same thing about the Cybertruck, so.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, but it’s also here rife with problems.

Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: So this is the Tesla Roadster Sweepstake and Cybertruck Semi Truck Program.

Executive Producer Tania: Great, if you order now, we’ll throw in

Crew Chief Brad: A windshield wiper blade.

Executive Producer Tania: Does it have

Crew Chief Eric: windshield wipers?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it’s got that one, it’s got that one giant windshield wiper.

Executive Producer Tania: Large one. That wiper blade keeps giving them issues. [00:11:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Something so basic.

Executive Producer Tania: And remember I said blade, not

Crew Chief Eric: blades. It’s that six foot windshield wiper.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re delaying Cybertruck orders because the windshield wiper doesn’t work.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it also takes 37 menu clicks to turn it on. They don’t want you to use it. That’s why it’s buried so far down in the menu. Just

Executive Producer Tania: the supply chain quality issue on the wiper motors.

They’re failing. Nobody. Well, you have to

Crew Chief Eric: imagine the torque put on that wiper motor with a single arm that’s like six feet long and then the air resistance. How big is that motor that’s got to move that thing?

Executive Producer Tania: I didn’t do the engineering calcs.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a 2. 3 liter EcoBoost.

Crew Chief Eric: Just to move the windshield wiper.

It does remind me having seen it in person. If you remember the 190E and some of the other Mercedes of that time period, in like the late 80s, early 90s. Some of them had like that big scissor wiper.

Executive Producer Tania: Honda Civic had that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but they also had a single wiper [00:12:00] blade on the Mercedes and it was massive. It worked then, I guess.

Okay, so we confirmed that. It has side mirrors now. It doesn’t have lasers or sharks with lasers. It kind of looks like a shark toy with lasers on it in a way. We’ll talk about the aesthetics here as we go. We already know about the less than 10 microns of panel gap and all that stuff. We’ve reviewed that in the past.

Crew Chief Brad: Better than Legos. You know what I’m not seeing? I’m not seeing how to get my 100 back. That’s what I’m not seeing. Where’s the link for that?

Crew Chief Eric: You told the ethos, the great wide interwebs. You would give away your Cybertruck allotment for a bucket of chicken. Has anybody taken you up on this yet? I mean, come on, man.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I’ve been waiting for Mark Hewitt to give me a call and he just has not reached out. So I don’t know what’s going on with that.

Crew Chief Eric: Because he’s trying to figure out how to buy Dogecoin because even that doesn’t exist anymore.

Executive Producer Tania: Is your donation to the Tesla Corporation, is that tax deductible on your yearly taxes?

It’s

Crew Chief Brad: supposed to be fully refundable. Yeah, yeah. I, I filed it. I got the tax write off for that back in [00:13:00] 2019. I do have a correction to make though breaking news. My foundation series is not the tri motor cyber beast. Oh, it’s just dual motor. So the dual motor is a hundred thousand dollars. When the dual motor was supposed to be 80, 000 when they first announced it.

Crew Chief Eric: Do we have a countdown timer for this like we did with the DeLorean? Remember that? That we need the same thing for you.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, the stopwatch was stopped back in 2019 because I’m not actually ever going to pick up one of these fucking things.

Crew Chief Eric: No, because you want a bucket of chicken for this.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, I want a bucket of chicken.

I will even take a bucket 2019. You know what? No. I want, when it was first announced, one of the day one Popeye’s had that chicken sandwich that was sold out and people were like stabbing each other for them. I want one of those. Give me one of those Popeye’s chicken sandwiches and you can have my 100.

Crew Chief Eric: So you’re saying that’s worth more than your Cybertruck allotment? I don’t

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, yes, yes, exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Even if you did get your cyber truck, I’m going to convince you to buy this thing by the time it’s over, right? This [00:14:00] is like our little, what should I buy here? You’re not going to convince my

Crew Chief Brad: wallet

Crew Chief Eric: to buy it.

You only get one car to buy them. It’s a cyber truck,

Executive Producer Tania: but you only get one car to buy it. It’s a cyber truck. I guess I’m riding my bicycle

Crew Chief Eric: cyber bike. Think of the mulch you can haul or you can’t haul. Apparently we’ll talk about that too. If you did take delivery of this thing, let’s say you set up all the financing and you’re making your payments and all this kind of stuff.

And you could, I got my cyber truck and you decide in three months, you want to get rid of it. There was a bunch of, again, shenanigans are the words I’m going to use here about whether or not you could actually. Unload the car, trade it in, get rid of it, sell it. Were you going to get sued? Aren’t you going to get sued?

I still don’t know the answer to this.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know either. I would assume you would get sued, but it depends. I think if you try to flip it for more than you paid, like if I took it to CarMax and said, Hey, will you take this? First of all, they won’t take it. But second of all, If CarMax was to take it, I certainly wouldn’t get market value.

I’d get below market value for it. So I don’t think Tesla would have a problem with that. I think they’re trying [00:15:00] to stop the people that are taking their day one investment and flipping it to somebody else for 150, 000, 200, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: They just sold one at Mecum and it came in at 105, 000, which is just Barely over sticker.

And I’m like,

Crew Chief Brad: wow. Okay. Which is what I was hoping to do until I couldn’t even get it, uh, bought a good chicken for it.

Crew Chief Eric: You mentioned before that they’re offering people a thousand bucks to change their reservations over. Is that in the system? Can you do that now? Can you convert that to a Tesla model three reservation instead?

Crew Chief Brad: Not anymore. I could only have done that by end of year last year.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s really timely too because they just announced that they’re going to be restyling the Model 3. So if you missed that window and said, you know what, the heck with the Cybertruck. I want to get that new Model 3 that’s coming out. Now you’re sort of stuck.

But with, again, what you got, uh, okay. So that’s out the window. That’s no fun. You can’t sell it. You can’t get a thousand bucks for it. You can’t get the economic rebate from the government for

Crew Chief Brad: it. The price went up because of [00:16:00] inflation from the day they announced it. Exactly. Exactly. What’s he going to do?

What are you to do?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you’re going to buy a bucket of chicken because you’re hungry, but nobody’s going to give it to you for that cyber trick. A lot. I mean, we’ve established that

Crew Chief Brad: I’m going to get my a hundred dollars back and then I’m going to buy a hundred dollars worth of chicken and I’m going to share it with my closest friends.

Crew Chief Eric: And I think this next article sort of. It’s this idea right on the head, which is the cyber truck is just another bloated EV that misses the point of being green transportation. And this is written by like an it blog or whatever. And so they’re comparing the cyber truck to the F 1T and all this kind of stuff.

I have this like Dodoi moment when I look at this, because it is not functional. And this does give us an opportunity to talk about the aesthetics of the truck. You see the videos like on YouTube and stuff. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know who to believe when people say, Oh, it’s so amazing. It looks so good.

What do you consider ugly? Right? I guess I need to phrase it that way because I don’t see the beauty. I can understand someone in the art community trying to explain to me [00:17:00] why you bism and all the Picasso and the melting clocks and all this stuff is beautiful. Okay, great. But I don’t see the beauty in this thing.

Crew Chief Brad: I think beautiful is The wrong word. There’s nothing beautiful about it. There are very few cars these days that are beautiful.

Crew Chief Eric: But why would you buy this thing? Is it just ironic? Is it like those memes that I don’t understand?

Crew Chief Brad: Because in that very peak, it looks like it’s got a lot of headroom for the driver.

That’s all I care about.

Crew Chief Eric: Have you seen anybody say that? sit in it.

Crew Chief Brad: No.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like a Supra. You’re on the slope side of the roof. So there is no headroom. Oh, well, that’s dumb. It’s so weird. I don’t even know how you see out of these. I don’t get it.

Crew Chief Brad: And so when you flip it over, you can spin it around when you flip it on the trail.

So

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, it’s just another bloated truck.

Crew Chief Brad: Evie bloated Evie. Yeah. Not good as a truck. There’s not good as an Evie. What is it good as?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I don’t know, because let’s talk about that all wheel drive system and those fabulous all terrain tires that Tanya got so excited about. Bye. Have you seen these videos of the [00:18:00] few Cybertrucks that are out in the snow?

None, I haven’t

Crew Chief Brad: seen the ones of the snow, but I saw the one that wrecked. That was a while ago,

Crew Chief Eric: but these ones in the snow, I mean, you can see the all wheel drive trying to do something. There’s definitely some latency from front to back, because obviously the systems aren’t connected. It’s not like Quattro or like a Jeep or something like that.

There’s no mechanical all wheel drive here. It’s all digital, right? These all terrain tires must be slicks because they don’t work. And then the hilarious video was over on Jalopnik, and this Cybertruck gets pulled out by like a regular F 350. Looked like he was just off the showroom, like nothing special.

It’s not like he had a lift kit, you know, 93 inch tires with Bigfoot knobs on them or something. He just pulled the Cybertruck out. And the Cybertruck’s not light by any stretch of the imagination, but That’s something to be said, too. You have a heavy vehicle in the snow, it should kind of like, let’s say, push itself down into the ground.

If you have decent tires, you should be able to get around, but it can’t get out of its own way.

Crew Chief Brad: It looks like snow and ice is stuck in the grooves of the tires, so basically you’ve created a slick. I’m assuming it doesn’t have a low range transfer case?

Crew Chief Eric: Why would it? [00:19:00] It’s all digital, right? There’s no real all wheel drive system in there.

I know, I know.

Crew Chief Brad: I bet an Audi could get out of that hole.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, that second video, Where he’s kind of going up the driveway backends, like fishtailing and stuff. And it’s just trying to crab walk its way up to your point. I think a Audi could do that. My Jeep could definitely do that. There’s a lot of other four wheel drive vehicles that could do it.

So you’re paying all this extra money for dual motor, tri motor, whatever. For what? To have a bunch of extra stuff in the rain? This thing could be front wheel drive and I guess it’d be like the new Aztec, I guess.

Crew Chief Brad: To be fair, a lot of vehicles would get stuck like that, though. It depends on how you’re driving it.

It depends on if you’ve got a low range. I think your Jeep’s got a four low that you can put it in, which is, it’s different gearing and changes the power delivery, which is necessary in snow and stuff like that. You know what? This reminds me of on Top Gear, they used to make fun of the BMW X5s. Yeah.

Because the all wheel drive system in those was not very good. If they had appropriate tires, or maybe they should put chains on their tires.

Crew Chief Eric: Kind of defeats the

Crew Chief Brad: purpose, though. My truck would probably look like [00:20:00] that. With an empty bed, with no weight over the rear. I guess the battery’s in the rear. I’m not impressed, though.

Crew Chief Eric: And I don’t think a lot of people are. And you know what else really isn’t impressive? We’ve talked about it many times before, which are these Stupid drag races. Tesla versus the world. And this latest one is just, I don’t even know what to say. It’s just a spectacle. I also heard that it was a complete farce and it’s mostly produced and or staged.

So it’s a cyber truck that’s trailering a 911. Drag racing a 911. And what am I supposed to take away from this?

Executive Producer Tania: Who won?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, who do you think won?

Executive Producer Tania: And they were doing a what? Quarter mile?

Crew Chief Eric: Quarter mile drag race.

Executive Producer Tania: I would assume an electric vehicle can get up to the quarter mile faster.

Crew Chief Eric: But again, what is the point?

Who cares?

Executive Producer Tania: It wasn’t even a tea can?

Crew Chief Eric: No! It was a regular gas 911.

Crew Chief Brad: Both are base level 911 Carreras. So no additional power or anything like that. It’s just a base 911. Which is still no slouch. It’s 350, 400 horsepower in the base level 911. So. Tesla and Porsche go [00:21:00] back and forth all the time with who’s better.

I don’t know why.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but you don’t see a 911 towing a Model 3 or a take hand towing a Model 3. It doesn’t make any sense.

Executive Producer Tania: Cayenne.

Crew Chief Brad: So that’s what they should have done. That’s what Porsche needs to come back with, with a Cayenne Turbo towing a Model 3.

Crew Chief Eric: And blowing this thing out of the water. Publicity stunt for the sake of publicity stunts, to me, it doesn’t make any sense.

It’s just another stupid Tesla drag race, as far as I’m concerned. Yep. No, stupid drag race, But this time, the Tesla loses? Loser! Loser! Was this an off road drag race? It was. Between an F 150 Lightning and a Cybertruck. And the Lightning leaves the Cybertruck in the dust. I mean, the sand.

Executive Producer Tania: I was gonna say, he dusted him.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, he dusted him good. Real good.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, well, you know, the tires are the problem, the supply chain, the manufacturer of the rubber.

Crew Chief Eric: That Tesla got a head start, but that lightning came up quick. It just called it a day.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe it’s just the way because when you video wheels and [00:22:00] stuff, it almost looks like the rear of the F 150 actually locks up and he’s just dragging the rear wheel.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the camera. I could watch this video all day long and repeat. It is just fantastic. I love the guy With the American flag, like,

yeah, yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, absolutely love it. Oh, that’s good stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Which is a better run company, Tesla

Crew Chief Eric: or General Motors? Notice that there was not a Chevy Silverado in this drag race.

It was a Ford. That is true.

Executive Producer Tania: Now, the more interesting thing. So Motor Trends has done a comparison test before you read the answer between the. Cybertruck, the Rivian R1T, and the F 150 Lightning. Which truck do you think came out on top?

Crew Chief Eric: I’m gonna take a wild stab here.

Executive Producer Tania: And of course they looked at the real world mileage, towing, they looked at off road capability.

[00:23:00] Acceleration, they did some like figure eight tests.

Crew Chief Eric: How many Porsches were they towing in this exercise?

Executive Producer Tania: They towed some 3, 200 almost pound camper trailer.

Crew Chief Brad: All right. The real question is who comes in second.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. Because we

Crew Chief Brad: already know who comes in first.

Executive Producer Tania: No, who do you think comes in first? Go bottom up.

Who’s number three?

Crew Chief Eric: I think the Lightning is at the bottom. Oh, I was going to put the Lightning at top. No, we already know the Lightning’s second. It sucks at towing. Like we’ve seen those real life tests with the guys with the campers and all that stuff. I think that’s at the bottom. We

Crew Chief Brad: haven’t seen a real life test with the Cybertruck of the Rivian.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s towed a 9 11. That’s all we needed to know. It beat a 9 11 towing a 9 11.

Crew Chief Brad: You can tow a 9 11 down a quarter mile, not 300 miles down the interstate.

Crew Chief Eric: How far is your home depot from your house?

Crew Chief Brad: About 4. 5 miles.

Crew Chief Eric: There you go. That’s as far as you need to go.

Crew Chief Brad: But then can you shovel mulch over the side?

Executive Producer Tania: You laugh, but in the cargo carrying category, I will say this. They commented that the Cybertruck, you can’t easily shovel mulch out [00:24:00] over the side rails, as you can in other trucks. Boom,

Crew Chief Eric: mulch. I’ve never seen anybody shovel mulch out of their truck. Is that a thing? Like, all these guys with their pristine bed liners.

I’m like, you buy bag mulch. Come on.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think they actually put mulch in these. I think it’s just a funny way of saying, like, the way that the bed sides are angled. It’s Not really great for getting stuff out. Anyway, so you think number three is the lightning, so who do we think is number two?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t want it to be the Rivian.

Is this one of those, like, it’s slanted in favor of the Cybertruck because everybody’s given it so much grief?

Executive Producer Tania: Who

Crew Chief Eric: do you

Executive Producer Tania: think is number

Crew Chief Eric: two? I’m gonna roll hard. I’m gonna take a chance. And say the Rivian beat the Tesla.

Crew Chief Brad: I have to abstain from voting because I saw the results.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, dang. All right, so what, what happened?

The Rivian is number one in this comparison, followed by the Cybertruck, and then followed by the F 150 Lightning.

Crew Chief Eric: Logic prevails.

Yes. So [00:25:00] what I learned from this, just from this opening picture, cause I didn’t scroll any further than that. I didn’t realize the headlights are in that gap, which I assume is a panel gap between the front nose and whatever that thing they call a bumper is at the bottom. Like, so that streak of light across the front,

Crew Chief Brad: that’s a daytime running light.

Exactly. I thought that was the headlights. That’s probably dumb. Oh my god, that makes the truck even stupider.

Crew Chief Eric: So ugly. And then, now that I’m scrolling down, this is the first time I’ve gotten a very clear picture of the wiper blade.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, so speaking of the wiper blade.

Crew Chief Eric: What does that wipe? Your ass. How does

Executive Producer Tania: this work?

I thought it, Brad said it. Here you go. Commenting on Tesla. Tesla presents a curve that’s so steep, a new driver venturing into a big puddle will learn that with the wheels and windshield so far forward, visibility can be completely obscured by the splash of potentially muddy water. A terrible time to learn the two step process.

For [00:26:00] activating the Giga Wiper, thumb the tiny button on the steering wheel with the windshield washer icon. Then look down and choose your wiper setting from a pop up menu on the screen.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow.

Executive Producer Tania: It got really poor marks in terms of like visibility. Apparently you can’t see out of the thing.

Crew Chief Eric: They summarize it in two words.

It says further in the article. Bunker visibility.

Oh, this is terrible. I also like the other comment in the con column. Cosplay quote unquote off road tires.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently they were horrible. They mudded up immediately and it went like spinning and sliding. Whereas like the Rivian and the Ford on their like, Whatever normal street tires were, it was like, fine.

And Cooper’s

Crew Chief Eric: that they got, you know, like whatever. I also like the borderline dangerous secondary trolls.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. Like that windshield wiper, like there’s a reason why, and it goes [00:27:00] back to the manufacturers now also backpedaling on the whole infotainment. Let’s control everything with. this big huge iPad in the middle of your console.

The tactile, the levers behind the steering wheel, knobs that you can intuitively just reach for, feel, and you don’t have to look at them. I shouldn’t have to divert my eyes to use my windshield wipers. I should just be able to flick. They’re on. Immediately.

Crew Chief Eric: I feel like the Cybertruck is this giant social experiment.

We’re gonna throw the craziest crap at this and then see how people react to it. Who’s the engineer that said, you know what? I’m gonna make the windshield wiper work like this. Let’s see what they think about. Like the whole truck is here. Hold my beer. Right? It makes no sense. But again, these are some of the clearest pictures I’ve gotten of the windshield wiper, the side mirrors, the headlights, some other things about the truck.

And what’s also fun about the picture of the Cybertruck just above the pro and con column, look how gross that is. I

Executive Producer Tania: just, I [00:28:00] I was just like shit. Yeah, it looks dirty.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s awful. Like disgusting.

Executive Producer Tania: It looks like, you know, you haven’t washed your car in a month and it gets that grime. That’s like streaking down the sides.

I’m

like,

Executive Producer Tania: just go look at your stainless steel. Appliances in your kitchen,

Crew Chief Eric: come on. And that roof line, I mean, it looks like combination Frank Lloyd Wright meets a kindergartner. Like, who wants their car to look like a house in profile? Like, it doesn’t make sense. I could make something less angular out of Legos.

And with better precision, as we know, than this Cybertruck. Like, oh God, it’s terrible.

Executive Producer Tania: See, it’s all misunderstood. The problem is the type of stainless steel they have chosen is magnetic, has slight magnetism to it. Therefore, the metal fallout from everywhere, be it brake dust, Passing a railroad track, factories, they’re sprinkling little metal pieces that are attracted to [00:29:00] the stainless steel body panels and then they get attached there and that metal is what’s rusting.

Lies. Not the actual Cybertruck.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, flag on the play. I call bullshit.

Executive Producer Tania: So even normal painted cars. Have this problem. What

Crew Chief Brad: I call bullshit. Cause there’s nothing that’s attracted to the cyber truck. All right.

Executive Producer Tania: Just go get some barkeepers friend and just polish your thing all the time.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I guess you can’t use like Google on or whatever that the bug stuff is to get rid of it.

We

Crew Chief Eric: just take this back to basics. The whole point of stainless steel is that it’s not supposed to rust. The fact that it’s rusting indicates to me that it’s not stainless steel.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s the stainless steel itself is not rusting.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s the metal that attaches to it.

Executive Producer Tania: There are deposits of metal that are falling onto the stainless steel body and getting stuck there.

And those little pieces of metal are what is rusting and creating [00:30:00] the little orange flecks everywhere.

Crew Chief Brad: Are we on that game show to tell a lie? We’re going to tell you three statements. Two of these are true. Yeah. One is a lie.

Crew Chief Eric: Two truths and a lie. Yeah, this is like, wait, wait, don’t tell me now, right? I mean, this is insane.

Crew Chief Brad: Did DeLorean have these problems?

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently they did change their grade of stainless steel at one point to make it more repelling, less magnetic. I don’t know enough about DeLorean’s history because I’ve never heard, but again, the community is very small. So who’s to say?

Crew Chief Eric: So is the Cybertruck community.

It’s getting smaller every day. It’s getting smaller and smaller. Based on precedent, on all the other things we’ve learned about Tesla, and all the other adventures that we’ve been on through TeslaGate over the years. I don’t

Executive Producer Tania: know what to believe.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. And it will come to pass in several years that It’s really actually brushed sheet metal posing as stainless steel and the cars are rusting full stop

Executive Producer Tania: Regardless if I paid a hundred thousand dollars for it.

I don’t know put an effing clear coat on the stainless steel

Crew Chief Brad: You think no, you just put a [00:31:00] wrap on it

Executive Producer Tania: defeat the purpose again We’re happy to offer you that as an extra fee, there must’ve been something they could have sealed the panels with to prevent this, if it’s truly the industrial fallout.

Crew Chief Eric: They could have used great stuff because the doors leak like every other Tesla does.

Right. The point is more of these issues are coming out. Like we’ve said, it was kind of rushed to production

Executive Producer Tania: rushed. Has it been in product? Has it been trying to build for like a decade?

Crew Chief Brad: Wow. Rushed. We’ve

Executive Producer Tania: been rushing it for a decade.

Crew Chief Eric: Two lies and a truth. Well, there

Crew Chief Brad: you go. Two truths and a lie. That was clearly the truth.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s unbelievable as it is.

Executive Producer Tania: No, wait, you have to go back to Brad’s foundation edition. You haven’t talked about the range it’s going to get.

Crew Chief Brad: This says all prices are shown without incentives or estimated 8, 400.

Executive Producer Tania: Wait, you’re only going to save for seven years? You’re And then the gas car is, [00:32:00] what? Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: because it says a Cybertruck is 900 estimated electricity per year, versus a gasoline car is 2, 100 estimated gas costs at 13, 000 miles, 330 a gallon.

Okay. Okay. Let’s stop right there. 20 miles per gallon. Hold

Crew Chief Eric: on. Yeah, all that stuff. That’s great. That’s well and good. But imagine this. You fit in a GR Corolla, right? I do not have any answer for that.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re going to compare it against an F 150, triple duty, quad cab, dendonburg, king range.

Crew Chief Eric: Shenanigans.

Okay. But what I’m saying is for the rest of us normal humans, especially. Especially those of us that are automotive enthusiasts listening to this, the GR series cars are hot. Whether you’re into the 86 or the super or the Corolla or the Yaris or any of those, let’s just say Toyota’s the place to go if you want a hot hatch or a sports car right now from the not American market.

So let’s just say you pick up a Corolla for 40 grand, Cybertruck’s a hundred. You can’t tow anything with either of them. You can actually probably get more in the [00:33:00] back of that Corolla hatchback than the Cybertruck, right? How much are you actually spending on gas after seven years on a GR Corolla? Even if you bought that special, what is it, the Mitsano edition or whatever that thing is that they have, the special one, add another 10 grand to it, you’re still going to come out on top with a gas car.

It’s sort of like when we would debate diesel versus gas. And people were like, I’m not buying a diesel truck because there’s a 20, 000 tax on it. And I’m never going to recoup the amount of diesel because diesel is more expensive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this kind of stuff. I’m wondering if this debate about some of these EVs, especially really expensive ones like this, kind of come out in the wash in the same way.

It’s diesel versus gas all over again. Is it really worth buying the EV? When you can buy, let’s say a couple year old off lease Mercedes Benz that’s depreciated, have a really nice car, money left over, how much gas are you going to buy in that seven year period? Let’s say if you own a Mercedes.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s a gentleman out there in the world who also, I guess, put a day one [00:34:00] reservation in and has his foundation edition Cybertruck, decided to take it on a 27 hour.

1, 340 mile road trip from Austin, Texas to California, and he had to stop 12 times to recharge it.

Crew Chief Brad: At 30 minutes of charge, that’s, wow, an additional six hours. I’m assuming

Executive Producer Tania: you took longer than 27 hours then?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: I mean that’s like a hundred and eleven miles per chart like what

Crew Chief Brad: yeah, that’s not good. That is terrible so here it says 318 mile range estimated or 340 mile range with the all season tires which are available to purchase So those trucks that you saw may not even have the all terrain, they may just have all seasons.

Oh man. Which are not good anyway.

Executive Producer Tania: And also apparently the truck doesn’t fit well to the charger, and so it basically maxes out the cable length. The Tesla chargers barely reach. Charge port. So you have that to contend with. Also, you better back it up [00:35:00] real close.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s like the people that pull into the gas station on the wrong side of the pump and then they’re dragging it around the side of their car trying to pump it because they don’t feel like moving their car.

Been there, done that. And then the towing capacity. I thought it was supposed to be over 20, 000 pounds towing. It’s only 11. My current truck gets 9, 900. Then there’s plenty of other pickups that can do 10, pounds. Yeah. How about anything? Diesel can do easily 15, 20.

Crew Chief Eric: So Brad, do you remember when we gave you the option, you know, when you’re still trying to sell, well, Oh wait, you are still trying to sell your cyber truck allotment.

When we talked about the Plyber truck, do you remember that one?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, the one that was built on an MDX.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was quality, right? It was, yeah, quality. It was Ikea quality. Dude, those panel gaps were really, really nice. Okay, you remember we’ve talked before. There’s been other people that have made cars out of wood, right?

That guy that, you know, restored his Doshibo out of wood. There’s a guy that made a Ferrari out of wood. And, but there’s [00:36:00] this dude in Vietnam that seems to just have a real knack for building replicas of vehicles. He’s at it again, and he built a wooden Cybertruck. I don’t know what it’s based on, but he said he was going to send it to Elon because quote, I am aware that Tesla has faced its share of challenges in bringing the Cybertruck to fruition.

However, I maintain unwavering faith in your vision and capabilities of Tesla. I hope to have the honor of gifting this wooden Cybertruck to you and Tesla to wish you and Tesla continued success and to maintain your position in the international arena. This guy’s super nice. He spent 15 grand on this thing.

It looks

Crew Chief Brad: better than the real thing. Oh my God. He built a wooden ATV with it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, man. Guy’s legit.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s tube frame. This thing’s awesome. I would pay 15 grand for this as a side by side. That’s the real Plybertruck right there.

Crew Chief Eric: Here’s the deal. Elon actually responded to this guy and Tanya, would you like to tell the audience what [00:37:00] he said?

He has these eloquent emails that he sent out that have been leaked to the public and things like he’s, you know, He’s got a great way of presenting things. He

Crew Chief Brad: has a way with words. I will say

Crew Chief Eric: that. Absolutely. Marketing genius. So what did he say in response to this gentleman?

Executive Producer Tania: Sure. Much appreciated.

Crew Chief Eric: I was surprised you didn’t go here, Tanya, but we’re gonna go here now because his reaction was so benign.

Sure. Much appreciated. Because what he should have really said is what he said on Twitter.

Executive Producer Tania: What was that in response to? I don’t even remember because it could have applied to so many things. It

Crew Chief Eric: was stupid and it went viral. I forget what it was and he responded to some It was some interview or something and he told the guy to go F himself and I’m just like But it was on Twitter, which is a platform that everybody’s been bailing ship like rats off the Titanic I don’t really care, but I thought it was hilarious.

Go Elon.

Executive Producer Tania: Whoo cares.

Crew Chief Brad: He was responding to advertisers boycotting X

Executive Producer Tania: That’s a good way to get your advertisers back

Crew Chief Brad: X gonna give it to you. That’s the marketing campaign right there X gonna give it to you

Executive Producer Tania: X

Crew Chief Eric: marks the spot a man with [00:38:00] so many things to say then that’s it I mean this guy went out of his way to build this beautiful Plymouth truck All jokes aside, it is really nice.

Crew Chief Brad: What he should do is share with Elon Musk, his manufacturing process. Cause a hundred days, I feel like that’s going to beat cyber truck manufacturing in Duluth times. It looks really good too. I would totally buy it. It looks kind of small though, but it looks good. I like it. I think it’s the scale.

Crew Chief Eric: I think it’s that it’s not stainless steel, that it looks smaller than it really is, and because it’s not stainless steel, you know what else it has going for it?

No smudge marks and you can clean it with pledge.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a modern day Morgan. Lemony fresh. Yes, lemony fresh.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Brad, you know, when you do take delivery of your Cybertruck, you’re gonna have to celebrate. Celebrate my ass. I would celebrate with a divorce if I take delivery of this truck. You’re gonna celebrate something one way or the other.

So let’s just say you need to celebrate with a case. of cyber beer.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my God, the angles on that bottle,

Crew Chief Eric: right? [00:39:00] According to this, it says Tesla super fans are complaining about the 150 cyber beer, calling it hot garbage and posting pictures of rusty bottle caps. It does look like complete swill.

Crew Chief Brad: It looks like someone pissed on a bottle.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s say you’re partying a little too hard in your garage by yourself.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, then your cyber truck can drive you home.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, yeah, that’s true. Self driving until

Crew Chief Brad: it runs into a wall or a fire truck.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you know, if you spill your beer on your cyber truck, you can now get renewed. Cyber shield cleaned it up with?

Wow. I mean, I would have just gone with Windex.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh no, stainless steel, barkeeper’s friend. Yeah, barkeeper’s friend.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what you should use on them. But no, special cyber shield. But the big question is, and this next article had me laughing, and I thought of Tanya when I read it. Does the cyber shield, which is a cleaning and protective layer, blah, blah, blah, all these wonderful heat protection products and chemicals we have these days, you know, graphene [00:40:00] and carbon ceramic and all this stuff.

But the question is, does it actually protect against bird shit? Because reports are coming in that bird droppings can actually ruin the stainless steel finish of the cyber truck. So Brad, you had to worry in the past about birds. Sitting on a tree ranch and pooping on your golf. Now it could burn a hole in the stainless steel of your Cybertruck.

Crew Chief Brad: How did DeLorean get away with it? None of them ran. They were all parked in garages, I guess.

Crew Chief Eric: See, you answered your own question exactly.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, then you just take it to the factory and have them replace the body panel that got damaged for thousands of dollars.

Executive Producer Tania: So what happens in the winter? Because obviously there’s bird droppings are maybe acidic or whatnot and, you know, over time could corrode or oxidize.

the stainless steel because it’s not impermeable to things, but like salt is not that good on stainless steel.

Crew Chief Eric: You get that nice crust on the salt on the stainless steel.

Executive Producer Tania: And sometimes in poor quality stainless steel, and you’ll see it in like cookware, when you throw salt in the water to boil the [00:41:00] water for pasta and things like that, you can actually Pitting that happens.

Yeah. On the bottom of the pan when you put the salt in at the improper time and things like that. So in the wintertime, when they’ve put the brine and all that stuff down on the roads and you’re driving around and you can’t wash the car right away ’cause it’s 17 degrees outside,

Crew Chief Eric: you’re gonna go out and it’s gonna be like Fred Flintstone and you’re gonna be able to see through the doors and the fdo, I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: I said it before people, you have stainless steel appliances in your home, the fridge, the stove, the dishwasher.

You get a drop of water on it, two minutes later, the thing looks like you vomited all over it. And you’re sitting there buffing it every two minutes so that it’s shiny and nice looking.

Crew Chief Eric: But you have carbon ceramic graphene shield spray on car detailers to take care of all that.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. And then when the rock chip hits it and breaks that coating and then the surface is exposed, it can start looking like.

When your wheels pit after a while. The cancer that happens on some boot coatings.

Crew Chief Eric: To think that bird droppings could ruin the finish isn’t [00:42:00] unfathomable. That’s

Executive Producer Tania: not unheard of because droppings, if you leave it on a regular painted car, will eat through the clear coat after a while and can cause

Crew Chief Eric: Well, not only that, in talking to DeLorean owners and listening to how they do car care and stuff, there is a certain way to clean the stainless, and to your point, Barkeeper’s Friend and some other of these household cleaners is the way to go, but you also have to remember that you need to grain the stainless steel.

Executive Producer Tania: No kidding! Done in a get swirl on regular paint. Now, a Brillo pad, you see what happens if you use, like, even a soft, thing sometimes on cookware, God forbid, like you’re rubbing it with something that has some sort of grit that you don’t realize, you’re going to have massive swirl marks. It’s going

Crew Chief Eric: to look terrible.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe all our concerns are completely unfounded and unwarranted and we just don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: We talked about the Cybertruck and how the stainless steel and care and maintenance of all that stuff. Tesla is making this move now, and I think it’s a cost thing. Saving maneuver because painting a [00:43:00] car is actually very expensive.

People are like, ah, just paint the car and, you know, clear coat it. So paint shops can cost multiples of millions of dollars to do that. And now they’re talking about wrapping their cars coming from the factory. So you can pick a wrap, you know, whatever style you want, all this kind of thing. And reports are coming in that the wrap quality might be as bad as the paint.

Executive Producer Tania: This costs 8, 000 and that’s cheaper than a paint job. Because if you went to somebody third party and had it painted, I’d think you could paint your car for that under that.

Crew Chief Eric: But that’s with a team of folks and you got to count the labor hours and the prep time. Yeah, so

Executive Producer Tania: on your freaking assembly line, it should be more cost effective.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s cheaper to wrap because the one robot can do the whole car in one shot. They prime it, wrap it, it’s out. If you have to do multi stage painting and then the time it takes to cure the paint, Clear the paint, buff the paint, finish the paint.

Executive Producer Tania: Man, nowadays they turn around a paint job in like a frickin day.

Crew Chief Brad: And they’re terrible. If only there was a [00:44:00] car manufacturing process that really zeroed in and just had this process down of making cars mass produced and painting them and getting them through assembly and to the market really quickly. Has anybody been able to do that yet? Not in a hundred years, my friend.

Executive Producer Tania: Here you go. And this article even says you could go to a local body shop who could wrap a compact crossover car for size comparison for 3, 500. So what are they charging you for eight grand? That seems really expensive for what you’re getting.

Crew Chief Eric: Cyber wrap.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m sorry. Like I’m pretty sure the assembly line paint job would be cheaper.

Crew Chief Eric: But think about it. You can get your cyber truck wrapped. In a stainless steel wrap, then you don’t get the fingerprints on it, but it still looks the same.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. And then apparently people are complaining that there’s bubbles and like missing pieces to the, to the wrap. So the robots need to be Lego robots that can go to 0.

0000001 micron tolerance when they layer the wrap on your car.

Crew Chief Eric: But think about it [00:45:00] this way. If you wrap the Cybertruck, it solves the panel gap problem because you wrap right up for the gaps. And now they’re sealed, and it looks like one smooth panel. He has solved the problem. And then when you open the

Executive Producer Tania: door, the whole wrap rips apart.

Crew Chief Brad: It looks like the wraps are ripping apart anyway.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, yeah. No, no, no. It’s a distressed look.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, it’s distressed. It’s patina.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s all the rage now. It’s antiquing. I’m going to

Crew Chief Brad: save my 8, 000. I’m going to go to Mako and I’m going to get the 350 on sale holiday paint job. God, what a mess. I’m not

Executive Producer Tania: suggesting you go that cheap on your paint job, but there’s something in between 350 and 8, 000.

Crew Chief Brad: What are we up to next? Yeah. Tesla raps about his paint job stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: So how about this? What about a Cybertruck that’s been polished to within an inch of its life?

Crew Chief Brad: Pretty

Crew Chief Eric: cool. Whoever did this, mirror like finish.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s almost camouflage when you look [00:46:00] at it. So very Wraith, stealth, Knight Rider. Is it worth 150, 000?

Is

Executive Producer Tania: it worth an extra 50, 000?

Crew Chief Brad: No.

Crew Chief Eric: How dirty does that get?

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t even know what to say. But that is how people are dealing with these cyber trucks wraps.

Crew Chief Eric: I have seen some black ones cause I guess the raptor or whatever, and they do look like the Wraith at that point. They’re, they’re pretty creepy going down the road.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t think the cyber truck looks good in any color. We can paint it blue. I mean, you paint yellow or, you know, these M and M colors that exist on, let’s say the Mopars and the Fords and stuff. There’s no way the body shape, it just doesn’t work. It is cool. It’s different. I mean, it is hyper polished.

It looks like a mirror. I don’t know that I would want that either.

Nope.

Crew Chief Eric: Shaq said he needed another car, and what did he buy? Cybertruck. See, Brad? He’s another

Executive Producer Tania: happy

Crew Chief Eric: Cybertruck

Executive Producer Tania: owner.

Crew Chief Brad: This is what irritated me.

Executive Producer Tania: However, it’s I guess a one of a kind, because it is a carbon fiber Cybertruck. So, Mr. [00:47:00] O’Neil is actually a little bit intelligent, because he went, Eh, I don’t want this stainless steel trash.

Crew Chief Eric: I will pay quadruple for carbon fiber. That’s a lot of carbon. I don’t want to

Executive Producer Tania: be out here buffing this thing.

Crew Chief Eric: It still weighs 8, 000 pounds instead of 9, 000 pounds though. They should have made the cyber truck out of carbon fiber. That would have been more cyber. That would have been more futuristic to have a street car that wasn’t a hyper car made out of carbon fiber.

Executive Producer Tania: They could have made it out of Kevlar, so the whole thing was not

Crew Chief Eric: bulletproof. Carbon Kevlar is not new. They did that in the 80s on like Audis and Ferraris and stuff.

Executive Producer Tania: Stainless steel ain’t new either, so he wasn’t going for that.

Crew Chief Eric: No, we’d straight back to the 80s on that too. It’s still ugly, but I like the red light in the front though.

Crew Chief Brad: I think it looks cool.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s murdered out.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve seen a cyber truck like this like blacked out in my area.

Crew Chief Eric: Here, the guy wrapped it. It’s still ugly, but it looks better than the stainless.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s better than it was, but it’s still polishing a turd.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re just not happy. We’re grumpy curmudgeon screaming at the clouds.

Everybody’s going, you don’t understand why the Cybertruck is so awesome. It’s just [00:48:00] as funny as these memes.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I think to that point, this is going to be a golden age for our show. Cause we can rag on the Cybertruck with all the new articles. about how terrible it is for years to come

Crew Chief Eric: in perpetuity.

Executive Producer Tania: How do you want to give them airtime?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we’re going to do it for the rest of this episode. So guess what? So I’m reading about bird shit on the cyber truck and next across my desk, I get this from the onion, which I know is a farce, but it cracked me up about pressure, washing the cyber truck. And they basically CGI or AI rendered.

The Cybertruck just getting obliterated by a power washer, and I just thought it was funny.

Executive Producer Tania: The Cybertruck is obviously the new, quote, hotness. So it’s top of mind, finally after 16, 000 years, it’s in production. 16 minutes after being in production.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my god.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s already recalled.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my god, this is so fucking stupid.

Executive Producer Tania: And you know, it’s [00:49:00] like a silly recalled. I mean, it’s a serious. It’s a serious thing, but it’s also silly at the same time. When we’ve gone through this, we’ve seen this before. It’s the reason why all cars now have the little clips on the floor mats, is because unfortunately Toyota had to learn this painful lesson of what can happen in the footwell if something Lodges and gets the accelerator pedal stuck.

The car keeps accelerating.

Crew Chief Eric: But Tesla marches to the beat of their own drum. Just want to point out the Germans had carpet clips in the 90s. It’s not new.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, but it wasn’t until there was a problem. Yeah, but their carpet, their

Crew Chief Brad: carpet clips cost 15, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it’s the little nubs. Underneath the carpet that have been, you know, solidly holding carpet in place for ages

Crew Chief Brad: bolted in from underneath the car.

And then the only way to get them out is engine out

Crew Chief Eric: 100 percent

Crew Chief Brad: service position for your format is engine out

Crew Chief Eric: in a beetle. Yes, everything is out in a beetle.

Executive Producer Tania: [00:50:00] Well, the sad thing is, you’d think that the little things like this, and this isn’t a format issue yet,

Crew Chief Brad: if this is worse, this is much worse. No, this is the accelerator pedal falling off issue.

Not the whole pedal though, just the cover.

Executive Producer Tania: Just the slide on cover. And apparently it’s a glue issue. The glue, the temperature, I think, something. I don’t even remember because I don’t care. They’re

Crew Chief Brad: using Elmer’s! That’s what’s wrong. Yes. They left Home Depot because shit was too expensive. They went to Target and bought Elmer’s from the school supply section.

And then they’re using that on this pedal.

Executive Producer Tania: It was back to school sales at the beginning of the year. It was discount. No tax on the glue.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah. They bought out the entire like, Southwest region,

Crew Chief Eric: it literally says on the bottle, Elmer’s blue, all it’s pretty straightforward. It glues all right. No,

Executive Producer Tania: not your, whatever this [00:51:00] accelerator pedal is even made of.

I don’t even know, probably plastic, maybe a little bit of stainless steel left over pieces that they reformed.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s no wood in there.

Executive Producer Tania: No wood in this one. I know I read somewhere that they were attributing it to in the production line, something with the temperature that he said wasn’t right. And then

Crew Chief Eric: it

Executive Producer Tania: didn’t set or something.

So basically when you’re mashing down the accelerator pedal, you end up sliding the cover off and then it jams into what would

Crew Chief Eric: be, hold on a second. What kind of troglodyte. It’s pressing the accelerator pedal like Donkey Kong.

Crew Chief Brad: Hey, hey, hey, some of us have big feet and we can’t control it.

Executive Producer Tania: No, no, no. Okay, because to the point of the Toyota incident, I am using the inappropriate rubber floor mats in one of my vehicles.

Meaning that they don’t clip in to the clips, and I am constantly actually pulling the format back sometimes while I’m driving, just [00:52:00] by virtue of my feet being there. I’m not even doing anything, but by virtue of my feet being on top of it, there’s enough I’m not pressing down on it, but it does slide forward constantly.

So I could see that a loose little bullshit cover on the pedal, especially it’s the type of pedal that’s on the floor. Then you kind of have that weird motion of you making your foot go up anyway. So. I think it would be easy to have that cover come off and then it jams into what would be the transmission tunnel if it had one, right?

So that center console piece like jams in there and it keeps the accelerator depressed and somebody apparently had it happen to them and they hit a pole with their, allegedly.

Crew Chief Eric: I thought they called that ludicrous mode.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know if the Cybertruck has ludicrous mode, but that was ludicrous to have happened.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I love the fix. Can we get to the fix?

Executive Producer Tania: The fix is on par with everything, right? I mean, I personally would love to spend a hundred thousand dollars on a car to have the glue not set correctly and then have the [00:53:00] fix be a frickin rivet.

Crew Chief Eric: I would like to point out I did research. Just like the Model Y, you can go to your local Home Depot, aisle 13, bay 26, and buy a packet of rivets for like a couple

Executive Producer Tania: dollars.

Home Depot! Does a rivet work? Sure. Is it aesthetically pleasing anymore? I mean, not to say that it was to begin with without the rivet. The rivet could be an improvement. I don’t know. Or

Crew Chief Eric: for the course of the Cybertruck, but you know.

Executive Producer Tania: You just spent a hundred thousand dollars on a car and that’s how they’re gonna fix it?

They’re just gonna be like, oh yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, not to open this can of worms again, but this is what I keep saying. saying everybody oohs and ahs over these vehicles and the build quality is variable from car to car and it is not on par with the hundred year old manufacturers pick one chevy ford fiat audi volkswagen porsche it doesn’t matter

Executive Producer Tania: let’s talk about build

Crew Chief Eric: quality

Executive Producer Tania: you can’t get these wet

Crew Chief Eric: jesus

Executive Producer Tania: So they keep [00:54:00] focusing on car washes or washing your car.

But I’m like, so what happens when it rains and the car gets wet? It’s shorting out the electronics temporarily and you gotta like wait hours for it to reboot.

Crew Chief Eric: Doesn’t rain that often in California where they build the Cybertruck?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, no, they built it in Austin, didn’t they?

Crew Chief Eric: Again, does it rain in Austin?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, it rains in Texas.

Crew Chief Eric: Lies, lies, fake news.

Executive Producer Tania: In the hill country, actually, where it’s quite green, they do get some water. Lies! And when the hurricanes come through, they get the remnants of the rain from those. At any rate, I couldn’t find it. I thought I saw something going into the whole car wash thing.

Where it’s like, don’t, don’t take it to the car wash. And make sure if you take it to the car wash that it has to be some sort of like, no drive mode or something. And it basically like, shuts down. It like, locks the charge port. It disengages. It disengages. the wipers apparently like what is what what and then it like locks the doors and all this stuff and then there’s like a [00:55:00] roll mode so it’s distant i don’t i don’t know anyway but the article was a guy i think who washed out the bed and then he ended up like bricking the truck for a while turned back on and i thought i saw something going into that Where they showed, I guess water was going under the bed somehow and then getting like stuck in frame rails or something like that.

And then I guess whatever, wiring maybe? I don’t know. Don’t quote me. I saw it briefly and I didn’t, I closed it and I don’t remember how to find the article again. But I’m just like, that’s

Crew Chief Eric: wild. You think about it. I’ve seen people wash their trucks with a power washer. Why wouldn’t you power wash a stainless steel truck?

Crew Chief Brad: Because the people that power wash their regular trucks aren’t buying cyber trucks. The people that are buying cyber trucks, they’re going to take them to their car wash down the street. They’re not going to wash it in their driveway.

Executive Producer Tania: To your point. It’s like, there’s so many other cars on the road that can get wet.

It’s not a problem. Like, I think we’ve figured out how to send a car through a car wash and not have it be catastrophic. [00:56:00] What? Again, you spent 100, 000 on a car that. You can’t get wet. You can’t drive after midnight. Like, oh, is it a gremlin? Like,

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, you don’t, you don’t get it wet after midnight. And

Crew Chief Eric: not the AMC.

Yeah. The eighties movie, the gremlin. Oh my God.

Crew Chief Brad: Who is taking their cyber truck to the car wash though? Because do you just wash stainless steel? I thought you just kind of wipe it down with a diaper or something.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, no. So if you go on Tesla’s website, there’s a whole like page scrolling of how to clean the exterior of the thing.

And it’s like, don’t use this. Don’t use that. Don’t do it in the sunlight. Don’t do it after you’ve eaten. Wait 30 minutes.

Crew Chief Brad: You can only do it on the day of the full moon in Feb, Tober. Yeah. Like

Executive Producer Tania: what? There’s like wild notes in here too. And this is. From the Tesla website. Okay, this is [00:57:00] legit stuff. Don’t use alcohol on the headlights. I’m like, why? What are the headlights made out of? Alcohol evaporates.

Crew Chief Eric: Because your beer will rust the stainless steel.

Executive Producer Tania: Ah, okay. Wrong alcohol. There was also a thing in here that was like, oh, if I could find it again, it was like, yeah, yeah, here it is. Do not aim water hoses. Okay, so like if you’re washing your car and you have the garden hose, right? It’s like don’t aim the water hose directly at the windows.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, aren’t these those indestructible bulletproof things?

Executive Producer Tania: Windows? I can’t aim a garden hose at? Like what? Now I don’t think it’s the glass itself because then it’s The door or the hood seals.

Crew Chief Eric: I think they leak.

Executive Producer Tania: So don’t get it wet, basically.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a higher probability of Apex seals in an RX 7 sealing better than those window seals in the Cybertruck.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently. And then it killed me at one of the things, like the recommended way to like, to clean the stainless steel. Again, this is from Tesla.

Crew Chief Eric: Unreal.

Executive Producer Tania: I know you’ve written some [00:58:00] articles about how to clean your car, and we’ve had the wax people on. I feel like even if you’re not the most into detailing, you know this.

And given it’s stainless steel, it’s said that you use a circular motion. And I’m like, Have you ever cleaned a stainless steel pot if you have anything abrasive? A circular motion. Oh my god. I mean even on a painted car you don’t really want to use a circular motion in case there’s something gritty there because you will leave swirl marks.

You always go quote unquote with the grain so it’s less noticeable. Oh my god.

Crew Chief Eric: Since we’re talking about cleaning, I included an additional article here. It goes back to the, you know, why the trucks are rusting because it’s from February and it’s not about that. I included it because I wanted you guys to see these pictures.

I don’t know if somebody urinated on this vehicle, [00:59:00] vomited on this vehicle or what. But this is why they look terrible. Like all the pictures in this article from Wired, oh my god, this thing looks so bad. Awful. Oh yeah, no, no, no. Absolutely awful.

Executive Producer Tania: It looks like your appliance is in your Like this was the first thing I said.

Do you not know when you have water splashing like the dishwasher or your stove because it happens people you go reach for the towel that’s either hanging on your dishwasher rack or you know bar or on the stove oven door bar water hits the surface and it looks like Garbage after two seconds.

Crew Chief Eric: I will say this.

Now, this is an argument for something that I just recently tested. So if you go back into the April catalog, you’ll see that Don from Garage Style and I did an episode with Dan Williams from Owner’s Pride. And their eco wash is designed for low water conditions and all this kind of stuff, and I was like, you know, I’m going to try it because until I understand it and get a bottle and read it and kind of mess with it, I’m not [01:00:00] going to really understand how it works.

I tell you what. I think that soap is perfect for the Cybertruck, and here’s why. I did it on two different vehicles, and I was absolutely astounded by the results. Literally a cap full, and I’m talking about like a Pepsi bottle cap full that you would get on like, you know, out of the 7 Eleven case, full of this soap.

to three gallons of water. Rinse the car if you want. Don’t. It doesn’t matter. It comes out the same. I washed our van and I washed the jeep using the eco wash with only three gallons of water. I didn’t rinse the car before. Did the whole thing. Used up all three gallons of water that I had. Didn’t rinse it afterward.

It looked as clean as if I had done it the traditional way or went to the car wash. Unbelievably good. One of those things that until I tried it, I wasn’t convinced, but in the case of the Cybertruck, I could see something like EcoWash being perfect for it.

Executive Producer Tania: So there is a section on waterless wash. You got a hand wash using a non ionic pH neutral waterless wash with a high quality [01:01:00] microfiber towel.

Crew Chief Brad: It sounds like that waterless shampoo.

Crew Chief Eric: And I was thinking the same thing again, three gallons of water to a cap full of soap. I did both cars, three gallons a piece. Transcribed But I was thinking about it. If you’re in a situation in California where water conservation is important, you know, they have drought conditions.

Don’t water your lawn. Don’t use a car wash. The eco wash is perfect. But then obviously taking it to the next logical conclusion, if you really can’t get the cyber truck wet, sort of like washing a cat, I suppose this is perfect, this is something I would recommend in all seriousness to cyber truck owners to use,

Crew Chief Brad: I recommend

Crew Chief Eric: getting

Crew Chief Brad: rid of the truck,

Crew Chief Eric: or

Executive Producer Tania: you could just Spot clean using a glass cleaner and microfiber cloth.

Spray the glass cleaner and wipe in a zig

Crew Chief Eric: zag motion. Oh my god. Oh my goodness.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh.

Crew Chief Eric: So many rules with this truck. It’s wild.

Executive Producer Tania: And basically, the other rules are immediately clean the surface. So bird poops on it, pull over. Get your [01:02:00] glass cleaner and zigzag it off. Don’t want to create scratches because it’s going to scratch.

Now there is a solution to this problem.

Crew Chief Eric: Don’t buy cyberpunk. It’s called paint.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s called the 5, 000 clear coat.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my god.

Executive Producer Tania: Why? It’s not standard.

Crew Chief Brad: You can’t rattle can it?

Executive Producer Tania: You could, why not? You could paint it. Although. It might short out. I don’t know what happens with the paint.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I would say paint over the glass to just seal everything in and call it a day.

Prevent any future leaks.

Crew Chief Brad: I think the best solution is to trade your Cybertruck in for a Rivian. A Fisker.

Executive Producer Tania: So there’s still more Tesla. This one’s even better. Better.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s more slus.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, something we haven’t talked about much this year at all, because a cyber truck is without fault.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, it is infallible.

Executive Producer Tania: Like anything Elon touches is a turd meets the expectations, is totally in line with the promises.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll say again, a turd

Executive Producer Tania: works to the utmost degree, like a fricking Swiss [01:03:00] timepiece. That’s how well these things work. So recall. The windows, right? Back however many years ago it was now.

Crew Chief Eric: The baseball.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, they’re, you know, armor plate glass that can withstand bullets, blah blah blah.

I’ll show you by lobbing this baseball at it with my untrained, unprofessional slow ball. shatter. Oh, it was a fluke, it was this and the other, you know, this is still the prototype, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So then why now that we’re in production with 3, 000 of these or whatever the production rate is?

11, 000 were recalled. That’s right. We did say it was 11, 000. So good job. They’re all in the parking lot somewhere. This is probably going to be another recall. Maybe, I don’t know. At any rate, some poor individual who spent 100, 000 on this car left it parked wherever and the impenetrable unsinkable cyber truck, heard that one before, it’s

Crew Chief Eric: like the Titanic

Executive Producer Tania: with its shatterproof glass.

The thief rolled up to it, tried back the window a little [01:04:00] bit.

Crew Chief Eric: Because it’s frameless. I want to point it out. The door is frameless.

Crew Chief Brad: So this would happen with any car with a frameless.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. So we won’t fault the frameless part. I’m not faulting the frameless part.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a lack of notification.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I don’t even fault that because honestly, if you jimmy a little bit, I don’t think anyone’s cars are that sensitive that.

They’re going to sound the alarm yet.

Crew Chief Brad: But the shattered window.

Executive Producer Tania: Did the window shatter? Because the window peeled back like an onion layer. And so people were up in arms about how, to your point, there was no alarm notification. I wasn’t told my car was being robbed. The alarm didn’t go off. I’m like, what alarm’s going off?

This thing like rolled up like a paper towel. It didn’t even know the

Crew Chief Eric: window was open.

Executive Producer Tania: Where’s the sensor? Suddenly the air current changed into the vehicle, but it was the door wasn’t open. That’s the sensor. I don’t know Is it worth saying that the thief was in a Nissan Altima?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Are you serious?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah But the [01:05:00] picture of this Peeled down window is just wild, wild.

You wouldn’t be able to do that on any other.

Crew Chief Eric: No. And I think it has to do with the fact that it’s safety glass. So it has that coating on it. So it’s not supposed to shatter and all that, but in thinking about previous Tesla’s that I’ve been in, remember, I told you guys that story about when I was in Tampa and how that Tesla model Y tried to choke me because the door seal ended up falling on my head as I was getting out and all this kind of thing.

If the seals are that bad on a Cybertruck, and with all those angles, you don’t need a pry bar. You probably could put your fingers in there and pull the window back.

Executive Producer Tania: Probably what he did.

Crew Chief Eric: Which is a lot harder to do on other cars, even on a frameless door car, which we’ve owned some over the years. It’s pretty tight in there, and usually the window goes up into a cavity.

Yes. Where it seals inside of that door seal. Even though it doesn’t have a frame to say that the build quality is maybe not quite where it should be. And all those weird angles might add an extra [01:06:00] layer of, I don’t know, weakness or entry point or attack vector. We’ll call it that, you know, I don’t know, but I guess this guy proved the hypothesis.

Crew Chief Brad: Tesla’s recall fix is going to be going down to the local Home Depot and getting some rebar to build a frame for your frameless door.

Crew Chief Eric: Just caulk it shut.

Crew Chief Brad: Just get a couple of tubes of caulk. Your answer usually, I

Crew Chief Eric: would just get

Crew Chief Brad: some caulk. I was going to say caulk, but I decided to go with the rebar.

Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: I’d like to spend a hundred thousand dollars on a vehicle that I can peel the glass back on.

Crew Chief Eric: But we’ve covered all that before. We actually have new news about the Cybertruck and Tanya, this one literally blows my mind. This takes the cake. Would you like to inform our audience on what this latest development in Cybertruck nonsense is?

Executive Producer Tania: We covered that last time. I’m

Crew Chief Eric: talking about the shifter. Do you guys know where the shifter is?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, I heard it’s like in the visor or something.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Who designed this thing? [01:07:00] Designed by a crazy person. Who puts transmission shifter buttons In the sun visor.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, it’s in the center. It’s like where your rear

Crew Chief Eric: view mirror would be.

But the thing is, it’s like one of the most highly touched areas in the car, right? The sun visor, the rear view mirror, and the steering wheel.

Executive Producer Tania: No, this isn’t. If you look at the picture, this isn’t a highly touched area because This thing doesn’t have a rear view mirror in it. Instead of rear view mirror, you have this button panel.

So it’s really not a high touch area.

Crew Chief Eric: Why would you put it there?

Executive Producer Tania: I wouldn’t put it there. I’m not defending its location there, but given what they’ve removed to place it there, it actually is not a high touch area, which just goes more to the shoddy craftsmanship if it falls out without you even needing to touch it.

Crew Chief Eric: What I’m talking about in the high touch area, You’re constantly moving that visor. You’re messing around with the visor and then your transmission shifter falls out and stops working. I mean, who in their right mind thought this was a good idea. And by the way, the hazard lights are there too.

Executive Producer Tania: What about the rear quarter panel?

It just falls [01:08:00] off.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man. I saw that too. I’m like, what? And it was just

Executive Producer Tania: like interior. It

Crew Chief Eric: looks like when you take the door card off of an old Volkswagen and you see the internals of how the window works. I was like, where’s the frame to the back of the truck?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, so did this thing not have to go through an HTSA crash testing?

This

Crew Chief Eric: is why it’s Teslagate. If you pay enough, If you got enough Elon Musk, which, which bill is his face on now? Like the thousand dollar bill? If you have enough Elon Musk dollars, you can pay this thing through the NTSA.

Executive Producer Tania: If this gets hit, it’s going to get obliterated by even a small vehicle.

Crew Chief Eric: Would you go cross country in a Cybertruck?

Executive Producer Tania: No, you wouldn’t make it. You’d get somewhere in the Midwest with a big rainstorm and then you’d be stranded because the car got wet.

Crew Chief Eric: Or because your shifter fell off.

Executive Producer Tania: So you’re done. And then you would have hit some place with some sand and then it would have gotten stuck. And so you’re done again.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s funny about this is, especially the picture of the fenders and everything that is now falling [01:09:00] off, the gas pedal, the shifter, the fenders. I mean, God knows what else is going to fall off the Cybertruck. But it’s literally the epitome of the expression, I’m going to drive it. Yeah. Until it falls apart around me, but it’s brand freaking new There’s always a tesla story that sort of crosses the boundary Between tesla gate and what we call low e here in the studio or lowered expectations And this one I have to give a huge shout out to the special guest on the drive thru a ways back He’s been a longtime fan of the show and supporter of breakfix through patreon.

Mr Mark Hewitt brought us this gem of tesla news You can see Tanya’s face right now.

Come on.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s unfortunate.

It’s an unfortunate state of society. This first article about a driver in a Cybertruck driving like a madman. With VR or AR goggles on. First of all, [01:10:00] I think it was a stunt. So, there’s that. The more concerning thing is, don’t put this out there in the world for people to try to go do. That’s the more concerning thing at the moment.

Cause, The Cybertruck doesn’t have autopilot, so it’s a stunt because there’s no way that it’s self driving and he’s just not paying attention. So, boom on that. But, second of all, don’t put this out in the world so people are like, Oh, I can go do this too! Or some asshat’s gonna go do it in their Tesla, which is another article.

They’ll accidentally mow over a woman and her dog, killing them, and then go, I didn’t realize I, uh, ran anybody over. While they were checking emails on their phone in autopilot, allegedly. I mean, what a great excuse to like, mow somebody down and be like, Oh shit. Oh crap. What do I do? Oh, you know what? I was on autopilot.

Like, it’s not still your fault, asshole. And you didn’t notice? Like, supposedly there’s some like, street cam that’s like, the woman was on your hood for a hot second, you know, dying. Like, what the f To

Crew Chief Brad: Tanya’s point, there are no cars in existence today that have autopilot. [01:11:00] Go read the fine print. They all say the same shit.

The car does not drive itself. Don’t be fucking delusional.

Crew Chief Eric: Mm hmm. I will say, you missed the point entirely, Tanya. Nope, she’s, she got it. She good. The whole thing with the VR goggles is just like when I sit down on my simulator. I don’t need to use my monitors. I can plug my Oculus or MetaQuest into my sim and play the game through that.

So when you plug your Oculus into the Cybertruck, you don’t need a windshield. Remember I said, we’re going to be driving eggs that levitate. So how do you know where you’re going? Mm hmm. You put on your VR, AR goggles and it’s just like being outside. Elon

Crew Chief Brad: Musk was a visionary. He saw the writing on the wall.

You don’t need a windscreen wiper because you’re not going to use the windscreen.

Crew Chief Eric: You won’t know that it’s raining.

Crew Chief Brad: The laser goes across your meta quest. They use the same laser from that eye surgery. They’re giving you LASIK from the LASIK. Yes, LASIK technology. Then your metaquest [01:12:00] that goes across and cleans your windshield.

The simulated rain in your simulated world. Just like they added simulated rain to iRacing.

Executive Producer Tania: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. See the neural link.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh God. You get

Executive Producer Tania: the neural link put in you and then that’ll connect you intimately with the car.

Crew Chief Eric: Didn’t they put the neural chip in somebody’s head like Tesla did that?

I

Executive Producer Tania: think so.

Crew Chief Eric: Cannot wait until they have complete cranial meltdown because I feel like I have that. Yeah. When I’m reading these articles, I can only imagine if that thing self combusts inside your head. Good night.

Executive Producer Tania: They did put it in someone, and allegedly they can move a mouse, like computer mouse, with their mind.

Crew Chief Brad: You know, I think I’ve got a new invention. It’s called A hand and you put the hand on the mouse and you can move it without even needing to use your mind. But you use your mind

Crew Chief Eric: to move your hand. You see, it’s that telekinesis powers that we have.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t, I don’t need wireless. Touch it. I can push the buttons.[01:13:00]

You’re

Executive Producer Tania: not telepathic. You don’t have telekinetic powers. What the mouse must have a chip in it or something like and you’re microwaving like waves out of your brain to control it.

Crew Chief Eric: There is no spoon. So all you do is tilt your head and that’s the mouse. It’s like the old track ball mice. Go back, go back.

Executive Producer Tania: Like night at the Roxbury. There’s already technology like that where your eye movements can be tracked and so that you could move things on a computer screen in that way.

Crew Chief Eric: Right.

Executive Producer Tania: I think they’ve already designed that stuff for people with disabilities. I don’t need to embed a chip in my brain and then all of a sudden have like, I’m gonna get charged to go to the facilities in my own home or something.

Crew Chief Eric: Just imagine how many Camp Lejeune emails you can get straight to your brain.

Executive Producer Tania: You can get paywalls. I need to pay for my subscription to, I don’t know, use my brain. I get like, shut down because my neural Lyn subscription expired. Like

Crew Chief Brad: what? ? Yeah, because you didn’t pay your [01:14:00] bill . Dear Lord, please start the apocalypse.

Start over. Wrapping out some Tesla news.

Crew Chief Eric: Our favorite internet idiot, WhistleAndDiesel.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t even know why we’re giving this person any airtime. We say like, oh, how do these people get murmur? And then it’s people like us that are like helping him. I don’t want to help him. I’m not going to talk about this.

You can talk about it. I’m going to stay silent. All

Crew Chief Eric: three of our Arbitron rated listeners. But yeah, I mean, this guy, I bring it up only because he’s beaten cars to death and now he’s got his hands. On a cyber truck. And so there’s no video footage yet, just some pictures on Instagram with the hype and all this kind of thing.

So I want to see what he does to it.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s going to explode it because he’s probably going to get it into some like benign accident. And the thing is just going to like go into a million pieces.

Crew Chief Eric: And maybe that’s the end of whistling diesel as we know it.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay, what would be more interesting is we know how Elon Takes the [01:15:00] shit like this.

Oh, yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: What is the retribution here? Because he’s not just gonna, like, is he really just gonna sit back?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know.

Executive Producer Tania: But if this guy goes and, like, brutalizes his baby Cybertruck here, Makes a mockery of it, basically, That’s a lot different than somebody trying to give you an artistic tribute. Yeah, I can’t

Crew Chief Brad: wait.

I’m kind of looking forward to this.

Crew Chief Eric: I am too. Yeah. For once I hate his stuff in general. I think he absolutely just abuses cars for all the wrong reasons. And a lot of the cars are like, man, I would’ve, I would’ve driven that. That’s a nice car. Abusing a Cybertruck. I want to see how this turns out.

Crew Chief Brad: In the one picture, there is a tank in the background.

Oh, dude, this is going to be great. Bulletproof glass. How about missile proof glass?

Crew Chief Eric: Excellent. That’s probably accurate. That’s going to be awesome. Now that my expectations are thoroughly lowered, we need to talk about things that are unfortunately unfortunate.

Executive Producer Tania: Look at that. The first unfortunate thing.

We’re [01:16:00] right back with the Cybertruck.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like this is, like, serendipitous, though.

Crew Chief Eric: No, this is the definition of irony.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: The headline alone Explains it. Okay, Yahoo News reports Tesla Cybertruck hits fire hydrant, catches on fire.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, they were already there with the water, so they’re good. Fire

Crew Chief Eric: hydrant was on the scene.

Crew Chief Brad: Fire hydrant was on the scene.

Crew Chief Eric: Apparently, he caused the fire. But also could not put out the fire. Do you know how much water a fire hydrant puts out? But that is needed to put

Executive Producer Tania: out the fire. Still

Crew Chief Eric: not enough. The picture of this thing alone just cracks me up.

Executive Producer Tania: How do you hit a fire hydrant? They’re not in the middle of the road.

Crew Chief Eric: Supervised full self driving.

Executive Producer Tania: It was F U S D.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Unsupervised.

Crew Chief Brad: No. So, so this Cybertruck identified as a fire hose.

Crew Chief Eric: God, there were reports this month of other EVs burning to the ground, and the fires are just unbelievably tragic.

Executive Producer Tania: Everyone wants to [01:17:00] say, Whoa! Gasoline, ice, thermal motors catch on fire more than Thermal means fire.

When was the last time, though, sir, that A ice engine that hit a fire hydrant caught on fire.

Crew Chief Eric: I believe the chances of that are one in a trillion.

Executive Producer Tania: Unlike the Fast and the Furious movies,

Crew Chief Eric: generally,

Executive Producer Tania: when internal combustion engine operated vehicles strike something, they don’t normally go up in a blaze of glory.

Crew Chief Eric: Would have been amazing if that Cybertruck’s dashboard lit up and it said, Danger to Manifold.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I get, yes, maybe ice do catch on fire more regularly, but it seems like the difficulty and the severity of some of these electric vehicle fires. Imagine you’re in some big collision and then you’re out of it.

You can’t even get out of your car or you can’t get out of your car until somebody comes rescues you and then the damn thing ignites. [01:18:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Would it be fair to say that maybe Knowing what we know, having the safety gear that we have available to us, that we should wear our Nomex suits every time we take a ride in a Tesla.

Crew Chief Brad: I was just about to say that. Yep, exactly. So you can go down the Tesla Cybertruck rabbit hole with this one article. I don’t know if you looked in the middle of the page, but it says man almost loses a finger to a cyber truck.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, it’s the window truck,

Crew Chief Brad: like. No, this was the door because of where the door buttons are.

Oh. So his finger got caught between the rear door and the front door. He almost lost a finger. And then the next one out of that is. Out of control cyber truck crashes into a house. I think that’s the one we talked about.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. A while ago. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: I just, I, I love it.

Crew Chief Eric: I saw one on the highway today, and I’ve never seen one in traffic and the beltway six lanes on each side type of deal.

It is massive. It looks like this lumbering, and I couldn’t figure out where the brake lights were. You know how we discovered that the headlights are in that gap between the front fascia and the bumper? I think the brake lights are in the same place on the back, [01:19:00] but every time we would stop and go in traffic, I didn’t.

See that back bar light up. I think that back bar across the lift gate only comes on at night. Unless he wasn’t using the brakes.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe regenerative braking that you don’t have to break in those cars,

Crew Chief Eric: but you still have to hit the brake pedal because we’re coming to a full stop.

Crew Chief Brad: Not if it’s full self driving, it’s fully aware, identifies as a brake late

Crew Chief Eric: or the brake lights just don’t work.

I mean, amongst a million other things that don’t work on those, they could have shorted for all we know had brand new temp tags on it.

Crew Chief Brad: I will say I see cyber trucks. All the time. I see at least one a day.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re creepy though. When they come up on you, you’re suddenly like, Whoa, what is that?

Crew Chief Brad: I hate the fact that they’re so popular.

I don’t know why I just, they rubbed me the wrong way. It really upsets me.

Crew Chief Eric: Because you didn’t get one and you are owed a t shirt. That’s why.

Crew Chief Brad: I didn’t want one. Yeah. I ordered a cyber truck and all I got was this stupid t shirt. Parentheses. Thank God.

Crew Chief Eric: Thank Elon. Get it right. Thank

Crew Chief Brad: you. Well, Elon is God.

There you go.

Crew Chief Eric: Soon to be, he’s gonna be the first trillionaire. Did you hear that? It’s insane.

Crew Chief Brad: Don’t [01:20:00] even get me started on how stupid people make money. He’s not stupid. He’s very smart. But he’s also stupid.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s also a horrible human being.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, horrible human beings make a lot of money.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Brad, you’re out of luck, man.

You’re trying to sell this cyber truck here in the United States for a bucket of chicken. And I was thinking, you know what? Maybe if Americans won’t buy. Your allotment. You could sell it to somebody overseas. Maybe somebody in Asia wants it. Maybe somebody in Europe wants it. Maybe,

Crew Chief Brad: maybe.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a whole list of reasons why the Cybertruck won’t be going to Europe.

Let’s face it. Tanya’s mentioned it before. The overall size of the vehicle. Shipping it from California to Europe. There’s a lot of obstacles in that.

Crew Chief Brad: But if we get lucky, it could get lost at sea on a shipping container ship. We would lose hundreds of them.

Crew Chief Eric: That only happens to Porsches and Lamborghinis.

Getting it through the European version of, like, the DOT and getting it approved and, you know, safety. Testing and all that kind of stuff is a lot more strict than it is over here in a lot of ways. Granted, they don’t have [01:21:00] to worry about the emission side because it’s an EV, but do they have the charging network to support it?

You know, all those kinds of things. Do

Crew Chief Brad: we have the charging network to support? Well,

Crew Chief Eric: I wasn’t going to get into that. Also, there’s an issue with the gross vehicle weight being between eight and nine. Thousand pounds so four and four and a half tons. That’s also a problem with europe. It’s just too big It’s just too heavy

Crew Chief Brad: the issue that the cyber truck is just gross regardless of gross vehicle weight It’s just gross

Crew Chief Eric: and that sort of leads into our final article about the cyber truck

Crew Chief Brad: elon musk And I quote we dug our own grave with the cyber truck.

Executive Producer Tania: I guess it was shortly after he announced Oh, it’s coming in november and then oh we dug our own grave on this Basically like, yeah, this is a bad idea, but we’re doing it anyway.

Crew Chief Eric: What kind of business sense is that though? And I mean, we’re past the point of no return, right? I guess there’s enough people that want this.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s still a year and a half from being cash positive, he said. Scaling the production is still a problem. So to your point, Brad, if you’d actually [01:22:00] click yes to that order, it’ll be a couple of years till you see it probably.

Crew Chief Eric: If you place that order, how much of a deposit do you have to put down?

Crew Chief Brad: When I did the estimator, it was 4, 500.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you start paying on it right away? You haven’t taken delivery of your Cybertruck.

Crew Chief Brad: You’re not going to finalize the loan until there’s a VIN number.

Crew Chief Eric: Are you sure? Because they can generate a soft VIN number and reserve it for you and say, this is going to be your chassis number.

Crew Chief Brad: But a bank is not going to fund that loan until there’s an actual vehicle.

That they could repossess when you don’t pay.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re using logic, my friend. You’re going to go through the Tesla financing corporation.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, that’s right. That’s right. And they can repossess unicorns and glitter. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: like software. I’m going to generate you a license key, but your trial hasn’t started yet.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, you mean how they generate stock value? They’ll just generate it out of thin

Crew Chief Eric: air. So they’re going to allot you your VIN. You’re going to start paying on a truck that you’re not going to receive for two years. I

Crew Chief Brad: think this is a good deal. That means I’m two years into my seven year loan. And all of a sudden when I get the truck, it’s a five year loan.

And

Crew Chief Eric: don’t forget, it’s an [01:23:00] armed loan, so it’s adjustable rate.

Crew Chief Brad: So wait a minute, when I buy it at the 100, 000 or whatever, does that mean I haven’t technically driven it off the lot? But when I actually take possession, does it mean it’s worth 30, 000?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, because you have two years of depreciation. But not two years of wear and tear.

I would tell you this, if you were in a different state of life, I’d say send it, man. Let’s make this happen. You gotta get this Cybertruck. You It’s just gotta happen, right? Just go for it. We got a little homework to do here. I don’t think I convinced you properly to buy this truck. I don’t think I could convince anybody to buy this truck, honestly.

I

Crew Chief Brad: don’t think Elon Musk can convince anybody to buy this truck. What are you talking about? I don’t see why they have volume in production issues. When there aren’t gonna need to make that many, cause not that many people are gonna take delivery. Demand is

Crew Chief Eric: artificially high. Just like generating those VIN numbers.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, everybody put in a hundred dollars on a whim. Cause like, oh, it’s a fucking hundred dollars, who cares? If the truck ends up, you know, shit in the bed, or they never make it or whatever, I lost a hundred dollars. Who cares?

Crew Chief Eric: [01:24:00] Is that how you’ve rationalized it for yourself? Have you just said, I’ve wasted a hundred dollars on a lot of other things and let it go, or do you think you can get your money back?

Do you think you can unload this cyber truck

Crew Chief Brad: allotment? Getting the money back versus unloading the cyber truck allotment are two different things. Because when I first signed up for it, it was a refundable deposit. So I should be able to technically call up Tesla and say, Hey, you know what? Nevermind.

Can I have my a hundred dollars please?

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, wait, wait. You said call up Tesla. You

Crew Chief Brad: could talk

Crew Chief Eric: to a human.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I’m going to call him up on the cyber webs. I’m going to use my neural net right to Elon. And he’s going to cut me a check for a hundred dollars minus a hundred dollars processing fee. So he’s going to mail me a check for like 15 cents.

Crew Chief Eric: If nothing else. They should be paying you interest on the 100. It should be like a bond. I

Crew Chief Brad: was going to say it should be like, yeah, 100 plus 5 percent interest over five years. I’ll take that.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. You loaned the Tesla foundation a hundred bucks. It was a charitable donation. You want your money back.

Crew Chief Brad: [01:25:00] I aided in their stock valuation and their inflated cash position and stock valuation.

And he took that money and bought X. And I don’t mean, I don’t mean ecstasy, although he probably bought that too.

Crew Chief Eric: X, insert variable here, right? I wonder if we’re going to look back in 20 years, 30 years, when we’re all relaxing on our lazy boys and we’re doing drive thru number 537. And we’re going to look back and say, do you remember that Bernie Madoff level Ponzi scheme?

That was Tesla,

Executive Producer Tania: which one, which, which story, what specifically is anybody surprised again?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, let’s put a pin in this Tesla talk. Let’s put a

Crew Chief Brad: bird shit in this cyber truck talk.

Crew Chief Eric: We will come back to the cyber truck.

Crew Chief Brad: No, please don’t. Oh, we will. We will. It’s please, please don’t. It’s still in the news.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome [01:26:00] episode of break fix podcasts brought to you by Grand Tory Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.

org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators Fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gummy bears, and monster.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none of this would be [01:27:00] possible.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

  • 00:00 Introduction and Sponsorships
  • 00:32 Tesla Talk: Elon Musk and the Cybertruck
  • 01:48 Cybertruck Reservation Woes
  • 03:38 Cybertruck Features and Pricing
  • 07:58 Cybertruck Performance and Comparisons
  • 35:32 The Wooden Cybertruck and Elon Musk’s Response
  • 39:51 Cybertruck’s Stainless Steel Issues
  • 42:48 Tesla’s Cost-Saving Move: Wrapping Cars Instead of Painting
  • 43:15 The Quality Concerns of Factory Wraps
  • 44:30 Cybertruck Wraps: Practicality and Issues
  • 45:49 The Debate Over Cybertruck’s Aesthetics
  • 46:44 Shaq’s Carbon Fiber Cybertruck
  • 48:52 Tesla’s Recalls and Quality Control Issues
  • 54:02 The Cybertruck’s Water Sensitivity
  • 01:06:50 The Controversial Shifter Location
  • 01:08:13 Cybertruck’s Safety and Build Quality Concerns
  • 01:21:19 The Future of Cybertruck and Tesla’s Business Decisions
  • 01:25:57 Closing Thoughts and Outro

Would you like fries with that?


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Tania M
Tania M
Our roving reporter & world traveler. Tania’s material is usually brought to us from far off places and we can’t wait to see what field trip she goes on next! #drivethrunews

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