Cybertruck engineer urges owners to stop shooting, abusing their trucks
FILE-Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk on stage with the newly unveiled all-electric battery-powered Tesla Cybertruck with broken glass on windows following a demonstation that did not quite go as planned on November 21, 2019 at Tesla Design Center
After Elon Musk touted Tesla’s Cybertruck as "apocalypse-proof," some owners decided to perform their own durability tests on the vehicle by doing bizarre things like shooting it and even setting it on fire. Now, a Tesla engineer is weighing in.
Wes Morrill, a Cybertruck lead engineer, took to social media on March 13 to implore some Cybertruck owners to stop abusing their vehicles.
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"Cybertruck has lived a tortured life for entertainment - Jumped on, kicked, burned, beaten, and shot (multiple times), Morrill wrote on X, formerly Twitter. To quote the black knight, it's just a flesh wound, I'm invincible! Now we've confirmed is tough, maybe Cybertruck can roam freely on and off-road in peace?"
Various posts online have circulated for several months showing owners abusing their vehicles.
In one video from March 8, 2024, a man with an array of guns including a .50-caliber weapon, shot at the truck to test if it’s actually "bulletproof."
Another post on the X shared on March 11, 2024, from a group called Tesla Owners Silicon valley shows an individual tossing a steel ball at the Cybertruck.
This video is similar to one posted by Musk in 2019, capturing Tesla's design chief, Franz von Holzhausen, throwing a metal ball at the vehicle.
And earlier this year, a YouTube video captures a group of Tesla enthusiasts kicking the Cybertruck while another posts shows an auto reporter hitting the Cybertruck with a sledgehammer.
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During a 2019 event to unveil the Cybertruck, Musk repeated a stunt that went wrong when a Tesla executive hurled a softball-sized metal ball at a prototype’s supposedly shatterproof windows, and the glass spider-cracked.
News of owners beating up their Cybertrucks comes after some owners in California voiced concerns over "orange rust marks" on their new vehicles, FOX 2 in San Francisco reported.
Gizmodo reported that the Tesla Cybertruck manual confirms the truck's panels are "susceptible to such corrosive substances as grease, oil, tree resin, dead insects, etc., which should be washed off quickly to prevent corrosion."
This story was reported from Washington, D.C.