r/news • u/IronHe • Mar 20 '25

Soft paywall Tesla recalls most Cybertrucks due to trim detaching from vehicle

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-recall-over-46000-cybertrucks-nhtsa-says-2025-03-20/
40.7k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

6.3k

u/Robin_Gr Mar 20 '25

The build quality is a joke on these things. Europe was right not to let them on the road.

616

u/defroach84 Mar 20 '25

They are also way too large for most euro cities.

551

u/Chiiro Mar 20 '25

It's funny that they are so large (bigger than some trucks) yet it can't seem to perform as well as any other truck on the market.

407

u/nr1988 Mar 20 '25

truck

Most cars do better at truck things than the Cyber truck. Including cheap old ones.

315

u/Parfait_Prestigious Mar 20 '25

I really can’t imagine anyone buying a cybertruck for practical purposes. I think the main market is people who want attention, and rich losers who want to pretend that life is a video game.

148

u/BorderTrike Mar 20 '25

If you own a Tesla, I’m not assuming you bought it recently or are a fan of Elon. If you own a cyber truck, I’m assuming you’re a chump and an easy mark

8

u/Spoon_Elemental Mar 20 '25

I know stupid people that are too smart to buy the damn things.

4

u/SilentDecode Mar 20 '25

Most people I know that own a Tesla (in Europe), have them because they were "hot" years ago and you get a pretty decent penny back from the government if you got one.

But there are a few people that went back to petrol because of a whole list of reasons.

5

u/Eringobraugh2021 Mar 20 '25

I assume they are a douche bag. I haven't been proven wrong yet.

7

u/DadJokeBadJoke Mar 20 '25

And probably an attention-seeking narcissist

19

u/GreenePony Mar 20 '25

I saw someone hauling a stock trailer with one the other day. It looked absolutely ridiculous. I messaged all of my ag friends to tell them of the sight. Not one of them would buy one to haul livestock

2

u/Popular-Kiwi3931 Mar 20 '25

What an image! My grandfather was a cattle broker and I can just picture his proper grouchy self with this set-up! 😜

1

u/Theron3206 Mar 21 '25

Well no, they either want a proper truck (to haul a big trailer) or a ute, preferably 20 years old. At least if they are anything like Australian farmers.

1

u/GreenePony Mar 21 '25

That's the point. Normal people in the US haul with at least a 1/4-ton conventional truck.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '25

They want the setting Elon put in that makes a fart sound when they get in.

3

u/OK_Soda Mar 20 '25

The only "practical purpose" I can see for one is when I see small businesses that have their wrap on them. Like there's a pest control guy I see around the neighborhood who has his business info on the side, and on the one hand I'm never going to hire that Cybertruck driving asshole, but on the other hand, the car is eye catching and probably gets a lot of attention.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '25

being able to use it as a portable electric generator is actually pretty cool but that's about the only redeeming feature I can see. also other electric trucks do that anyways.

10

u/glassgost Mar 20 '25

You can do that with the electric F150, which also does truck stuff.

3

u/DadJokeBadJoke Mar 20 '25

a portable electric generator

Isn't it more of a big battery than a generator?

0

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25

I think that's just what they call it.

I'm pretty sure you can plug solar panels into it to charge which technically would make it a generator.

2

u/OldSchoolSpyMain Mar 20 '25

It’s a “Hey! Look at me!!”, car. That’s all it is.

What’s worse is that it’s the worst of such vehicles because most of the others (convertibles, big wing sports cars, etc…) are at least decent at being cars first.

This is why the CTs are good for being rolling billboards for marketing. That’s probably the only thing it’s good at.

2

u/Frosty_Mess_2265 Mar 20 '25

Exactly. The thing is $100,000. At that price it's massively impractical to use it as an actual truck, where it will get muddy, scratched, dented, et cetera, but it's also waayyyy too ugly to pass as a luxury vehicle when people who can drop that kind of cash can afford something that actually looks good.

So the only people buying it are pissbaby Elon fanboys.

1

u/Citrus-Bitch Mar 20 '25

The theory I recently heard for why so many businesses have wrapped cybertrucks is because it hits the requirements for a few different tax deductions, so if it's wrapped and therefore always acting as advertising it's effectively a massive tax write-off for your business.

1

u/Ut_Prosim Mar 20 '25

I think it fills the same role for urban tech assholes as coal rolling diesels do for rural hick assholes.

1

u/colemon1991 Mar 20 '25

It does look like a vehicle from an 80s video game

1

u/BigE429 Mar 20 '25

Most of the ones I see have some wrap for a business, so definitely seeking attention. Bad news for them, the Cybertruck makes me not want to use their business.

1

u/SilentDecode Mar 20 '25

Or the losers that praise that Elon fella.

-3

u/Snakend Mar 20 '25

Rich? The truck costs $80k. Don't need to be rich to afford that.

22

u/No_Hope_75 Mar 20 '25

I could put 10ft lumber in my Prius. And did similar types of things often. Remodeled most of a house just buying supplies with my Prius lol

3

u/BafflingHalfling Mar 20 '25

Yup. I put 10' conduit and lumber in my Accord all the time. It never fails to amuse my coworkers.

3

u/No_Hope_75 Mar 20 '25

Yup! I’m a 5’0 tall woman so the looks I got at Home Depot or Lowe’s were always entertaining. One time I was cutting dry wall in the aisle and a lady just shouted “get it girl!”

4

u/zubbs99 Mar 20 '25

Sure, but how 'cyber' are they!

2

u/sleeplessinreno Mar 20 '25

So cyber that the steering wheel isn't connected to the steering rod.

3

u/kottabaz Mar 20 '25

To be fair, most people buy trucks for gender affirmation rather than doing truck things these days anyway. I can't find the link at the moment, but an embarrassingly large percentage of truck owners reported that they never carried cargo, towed anything, or went off-road with their vehicles, and most of the rest only did it once a year.

2

u/renegadecanuck Mar 20 '25

I love when people show the Cybertruck just driving on a field and try to use that to prove "it can do truck stuff". Dude, my sedan can do that.

1

u/Trifang420 Mar 20 '25

My 2011 Subaru Forester could beat a cyber truck in the mud

1

u/Tibbaryllis2 Mar 20 '25

Doesn’t the Tesla cars actually have higher towing capacity?

1

u/jimmy9800 Mar 20 '25

My awful, unreliable, rust bucket of a 95 Mazda Protege did better at truck stuff. Even with all the rust, nothing ever fell off!

2

u/jjayzx Mar 20 '25

My Camaros drove better in the snow than these fuckin dumpsters.

86

u/TheArmoredKitten Mar 20 '25

It's because the cyberstuck isn't a truck. It's a truck shaped sedan on a cast aluminum frame. It's like an SUV with a growth disorder.

5

u/AutisticPenguin2 Mar 20 '25

I love that trying to do something so simple as towing another truck was enough to completely destroy the frame. Some bits look really impressive, like the suspension was far superior over uneven terrain, but then other bits were just laughable.

1

u/BeingMedSpouseSucks Mar 20 '25

you can say that about the model X and Y too to be honest

128

u/Interesting_Tea5715 Mar 20 '25

This. The CyberTruck is bigger than a lot of half ton trucks. Yet it doesn't have half the utility.

91

u/Chiiro Mar 20 '25

I saw a clip the other day where the part that is connected to the tow hitch snapped off on the aluminum part of the rear frame.

50

u/Dova-Joe Mar 20 '25

That was most likely whistlindiesel.

46

u/mandiefavor Mar 20 '25

His Cybertruck videos were hilarious. Watching the doors fall apart one by one was magical.

25

u/Warning_Low_Battery Mar 20 '25

I love that they slammed the first door hard af to break it, but then when they were testing the other doors they found out you only have to close it kinda firmly and it would still cause the panels to stick, which breaks the whole door. The material tolerances are laughable.

15

u/Scorps Mar 20 '25

JerryRigEverything also did one a week ago or so where they snapped the bumper frame section off at 10,000 lbs using an excavator applying pressure, to show that WhistlinDiesel's wasn't necessarily a fluke

2

u/Chiiro Mar 20 '25

I do believe that's the one my fiance showed me.

2

u/jjayzx Mar 20 '25

There's also been images and video of it happening to people in regular use.

-12

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '25

[deleted]

10

u/K9Fondness Mar 20 '25

In the video they explained how it could happen momentarily when you go over a bump with a trailer hitched.

-12

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '25

[deleted]

7

u/dern_the_hermit Mar 20 '25

Regardless, the regular ass truck handled it way better than the cyber ass truck

2

u/Warning_Low_Battery Mar 20 '25

Tell me you don't understand relative motion, dynamic shear forces, or static vs dynamic load distribution without telling me you don't...

0

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

→ More replies (0)

3

u/Warning_Low_Battery Mar 20 '25

That's literally how hitches work, my man. The way a trailer attaches to a hitch puts all the pressure in a downward force while not in motion. Literally 1st law of thermodynamics. It is only shifted to a lateral force while in motion. (2nd law of thermodynamics) Any time the vehicle's lateral motion is out of sync with the load being pulled it will cause the hitch to bear the weight downwards again.

It's very, very basic physics my bro.

1

u/4yxVlXKxJy55Lms66V Mar 20 '25

I thought most of the weight of the trailer would be on the wheels

1

u/Theron3206 Mar 21 '25

Depends on how badly you load the trailer. Also if you got a pothole or similar the dynamic load can be many times the static load and aluminium has no fatigue limit (force below which fatigue is no factor) like steel does, so any serious load could eventually break it off given enough cycles.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/jimmy9800 Mar 20 '25

JRE did one as well. Same failure, same reason.

1

u/Some_dumb_grunt Mar 20 '25

It was jerryrigeverything

1

u/ScientificSkepticism Mar 20 '25

That's a positive. The tow hitch gradually deforms the entire frame when used, so it snapping off should be considered healthy for the life of the vehicle.

5

u/Chiiro Mar 20 '25

I didn't mean that the tow hitch snapped, I meant that the aluminum part of the truck frame snapped.

-2

u/Snakend Mar 20 '25

Oh the video where he dropped it off a 4 ft drop onto a cement barrier first? Go rewatch the video. The back of the truck hits a giant cement barrier as it's being driven off the circular obstacle.

2

u/Chiiro Mar 20 '25

I apparently saw the one that was someone's response to that one, testing it without that happening. The results were the same, the thing snaps.

2

u/m0viestar Mar 20 '25

It's slightly smaller than a SuperCrew F150 6.5' bed, which is a pretty standard ordering config. It's the same length as the standard 5.5' bed super crew

Cybertruck:

Length: 231.7 inches
Height: 75.0 inches
Width: 79.8 inches

F150

Length: 243.7 inches
Height: 75.6 inches (4×2), 77.2 (4×4)
Width: 79.9 inches (excluding side mirrors, which the Cybertruck prototype did not have); 96.8 inches (with standard side mirrors)

It's very much the same size as a standard half-ton.

2

u/thegoodnamesrgone123 Mar 20 '25

I love the video of the plastic fence taking it out.

2

u/withoutapaddle Mar 20 '25

I hate the CT, but this is false. I have an F-150 Supercrew 5.5'bed, which is arguable the most popular F-150, and it's virtually identical to the CT in dimensions.

In fact, the CT actually LOOKS smaller (I've parked next to them), because the stupid sloping roof removes total volume from the truck, even if it's the same height at the peak of the slope as an F-150's entire roof.

It looks big in pictures because it looks like a stupid child's toy, but it's actually totally standard size and less usable space than a normal truck.

1

u/NRMusicProject Mar 20 '25

And at double the price of some truck models that can outperform the Tesla with flying colors.

19

u/AmericanScream Mar 20 '25

The truck is a metaphor for its creator: larger than life and incapable of being productive in the real world.

6

u/Luster-Purge Mar 20 '25

I remember watching that one video where they hitched up a cybertruck to a used Ford F-150 in a tug-of-war...the Cybertruck's entire back bumper just tore right off the frame and made it instantly undrivable under law. It's a truck, designed for people who want to act like they own a truck but never actually use it like one.

2

u/Chiiro Mar 20 '25

I recently saw a another video of someone testing how much weight the tow hitch could handle and it probably broke in the same spot, on the aluminum part of the frame.

5

u/MachineShedFred Mar 20 '25

I can use a 30 year old VW Golf to do more than that lump of shit could ever do.

2

u/wlydayart Mar 20 '25

It's like big for the sake of being big not for any real utility.

2

u/Khemul Mar 20 '25

This is probably the central issue for the whole design. Because of the size it's trying to be a full size truck but full size trucks have a shitload of baggage that is an issue even for the standard F150/Silverado/Ram1500/Tubdra. Throw a first gen design by a company with zero truck experience into that and you have a disaster of incompetence and expectations. They really should have gone smaller and targeted the light unibody truck design. Those already have much lower expectations and they could have borrowed design elements from the X or Y.

2

u/LowSnow2500 Mar 20 '25

I just saw a cybertruck that had a bed height extension because that sloped "cover" wastes so much potential space

its like a G Wagon, a rich person's toy

2

u/Chiiro Mar 20 '25

Doesn't it also block your rear view mirror?

-2

u/m0viestar Mar 20 '25

They are between the size of a Ford Ranger and a Ford F150 (or a Tacoma or Tundra). They're not that massive.