It’s no secret that electric vehicles don’t always live up to the range estimates determined by the EPA, especially under real-world conditions.
But when it comes to Tesla’s Cybertruck, built by a company that has long prided itself on its competitive range numbers, that disparity is stretching to new extremes.
According to two Tesla Cybertruck owners who shared their experiences with a member of the Cybertruck Owners Club — first spotted by InsideEVs — the long-awaited vehicle’s range is turning out to be a big disappointment.
After putting 10,000 miles on their shared all-wheel-drive variant, the numbers fell far short of what the company advertises, getting just 206 miles starting at a full charge and 164 miles starting at 80 percent.
That’s even below the measly 254 miles YouTube account Out of Specs got after taking their rented Cybertruck on an albeit frosty highway road trip earlier this year.
Worse yet, that’s considerably lower than the 320-mile range the Elon Musk-led company promises — further highlighting the much-hyped vehicle’s shortcomings and Tesla’s well-documented tendency to inflate numbers.
To be clear, despite the clear discrepancy, there’s nuance to the new tests. The drivers noted that while they got “no speeding tickets or accidents,” they were doing “fairly aggressive driving,” and weren’t “babying the truck,” which is bound to have a significant effect on range.
Then there are differences in tires, environmental factors like headwind and outside temperatures, as well as the proportion of highway to road usage. In its tests of EV ranges, the EPA goes through four city tests, two highway tests, and two constant speed tests with each vehicle. As Ars Technica noted earlier this year, testing is also done on a dynamometer, and not on real roads, at ambient temperatures of anywhere between 68 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit.
Other than dealing with a less-than-stellar range, the two Cybertruck owners also reported that the main screen blacked out when the battery percentage was low, forcing them to have the vehicle towed.
They also found that the vault, a sealed compartment built into the truck bed, was “not waterproof” and “gets wet inside.” That last point was corroborated by other drivers as well.
“All of the above tells me there is a critical failure warning light flashing at Tesla,” a self-professed “long-time Tesla shareholder” and owner commented on the forum post. “We now have enough data to definitively say that Tesla blew it on the Cybertruck range.”
“With these facts on the table, one has to ask why did Tesla get this so wrong?” they added. “We have seen this before.”
“It is a symptom of an organization where everyone is afraid to tell the emperor that he is not wearing clothes,” they concluded, likely referring to Musk treating the vehicle as a pet project.
More on the Cybertruck: The Mighty Cybertruck Keeps Getting Stuck in the Snow
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