Tesla’s Cybertruck is as reckless as Elon Musk

Here’s a little story. The other day I was driving along a windy canyon road on my way back from school drop off. The sun was shining, the sky was cloudless, and I was in a truly excellent mode. That is until I was probably cut off by not one but two of Elon Musk’s Space Ranger truck things, you know, the cars-trucks that look like an early sketch of the DeLorean, like Mad Max, but the Mel Gibson version. Yeah, so these trucks aren’t out yet, or at least definitely weren’t at the time that I saw two of them on the road. I checked, and they weren’t just driving. They were like really speeding, they were crisscrossing in front of each other, they were cutting myself and others off. They were dangling out of the windows. And they even, this is true, went side by side through a single-lane tunnel on a winding canyon road that is literally known for fatalities. So I slowed to an absolute crawl and waited for these wackadoos us to get well ahead of me, and then just put the whole Tesla cybertruck incident out of my mind.

Until I saw this Top Gear video shot precisely where I had seen them. See, topgear.com apparently had the opportunity to send two riders out to test drive these things around Southern California in anticipation of their release. And in between breaking more laws than I can count on all of my fingers and toes, they found time to sing the praises of this overblown attention-seeking scourge on humanity, by which I mean Elon Musk, and okay also the cybertruck. Here’s a choice quote from the article: “Find a few curves up in the hills above Malibu and with some speed under the wheels the steering ratio knocks back from manic to manageable.” I don’t know what that means. But I am certain that this article left out the part where they tried to kill a single mother in a hatchback.

Essentially, what I got from the piece was dude, it’s like huge and awesome and everyone will want to take your picture.

One more quote just for fun. Does the pickup truck need to be this fast? Of course does it, but drag racing has always been Tesla’s party track. Why stop now? Well, I think the family and friends of the many, many, many Malibu residents and tourists who have been killed by drag racers in the area would be able to give them some reasons, but I think we know that safety hasn’t historically been Musk’s top priority.

So I’ll give you that my first personal experience with the cybertruck is limited, but it is also more experience than most people have had. And having seen two of these early adopters live on the road, it was both irritating and gratifying to realize that my suspicions were indeed correct. You have to be a real asset to covet or indeed create one of these things.