I drove it for one day, now I don’t want one.
What’s a Turo?
For the unfamiliar, Turo is a service that lets vehicle owners list their cars for rent. As you might imagine, this opens up the realm of rentals far past generic fleet cars. I like it because I like to work with individuals when I can, and the wide variety of choices is just fantastic.
When Jenelle and I were in Denver, we decided on our last day that we’d rent a car and go around the city and check out a few attractions before heading to the airport in the evening. She tasked me with finding our car, so I turned to Turo and after a minute, had found the car I wanted to rent. To her chagrin, it was a CyberTruck.
I’d always wanted to drive one, but hadn’t been bothered to schedule a test drive or anything at the local service center. Now, I’d get to give it a full day of driving around an unfamiliar city, which seemed to be an ideal test for me. Jenelle begrudgingly agreed to give a shot, so the next day, we met $OWNER at our hotel parking lot. He was a friendly fellow who agreed not only to drop off the car for us, but to meet us at the airport for pickup as well! I cannot say how nice that was of him, and made the arrival at the airport stress free.
The Good
Let’s start on some positive notes, as there was a lot right with the car.
My Tesla profile transferred over seamlessly after $OWNER added me as a driver. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, control preferences, and settings all imported and worked perfectly.
It’s comfy – like, extremely comfortable to sit in. The air conditioned seats were a nice touch. I thought the interior LED trim lights were a bit of a gimmick, until I realized they would blink red if you indicated a turn and there was an obstacle. I did like that, it was a mild “red alert” sort of feature.
When you’re driving it, you’re not looking at the outside of it. The car certainly has its own unique interior styling, love it or hate it.
The bed rolling cover was the smoothest cover I’d ever seen. They absolutely did that right.
The “fly-by-wire” steering yoke was amazing for the most part, and took me about 1 minute to get the hang of. I do believe it will be the future of steering – something about not having to crank the wheel over for a sharp turn was really satisfying, as if the car knew what I wanted to do and just did it.
The Bad
Not a Tesla or CyberTruck issue per se, but I was extremely disappointed to see auto-pilot was disabled. $OWNER mentioned the last people that had the car the day before had been messing around and had received too many warnings and locked the car out of auto-pilot / full self driving. They really must have screwed up, because Tesla is really generous in their warnings to pay attention.
The interior was nice, but felt incomplete compared to more modern vehicles. It had all the bells and whistles, but was missing something to make it feel complete to me. Maybe it was just the lack of features against a $75k+ price tag.
The Hideous
The exterior. There’s nothing redeeming about sharp edges that will mostly likely serve to injure folks. The taillight bar is uninspired. The outer mirrors are too small for the car.
The interior rear view mirror can only be called vestigial at best, since you usually drive with the bed cover down and this completely obscures any view out of the rear. You’re instead meant to rely on the exterior cameras on the main display subbing in lieu of mirrors. Guess what? There was one time I was backing up that they simply didn’t work, they were completely dark.
The bed is oddly shaped, the sides don’t come straight down, but rather are angled top to bottom slanted in towards the center.
Branding (why did they call it a truck?)
Tesla made a choice (in retrospect, a bad one) to call the CyberTruck, well, a truck. This has opened the floor up to fair comparisons against the F-150 tier market of trucks, and the results are in. A YouTuber did a F-150 vs CyberTruck abuse test, and while neither vehicle ended in a roadworthy state, the CyberTruck faired far worse.
They had the opportunity to go with CyberSUV, or CyberBrick, or honestly they could have bought the DeLorean Motor Company and called it the “Big DeLorean”.
In any event, having driven the CyberTruck, it felt like a big SUV to me, and far less like a truck.
Future (I have higher hopes for v2, if it ever comes out)
I am interested to see if the CyberTruck platform ever makes it to v2. Sales have been entirely underwhelming, perhaps due to a combination of price, appearance, and limited capabilities.
As much as I’m not a huge fan of the appearance of the CyberTruck, I was happy to see Tesla take a chance and try a new style out. The automotive industry (and many others) have lost the spark of originality. Most SUVs are the typical teardrop shape. Convertibles aren’t as common, and coupes are on the decline as well.
The CyberTruck was a blast to drive, and I’d probably rent another one. Buying it though? That’s a big enchilada, and I cannot ever see a time where I’d knowingly buy a platform as flawed as the CyberTruck v1.