Up until now you’ve heard a lot of hyperbolic rhetoric about the 2024 Tesla Cybertruck, some of which masqueraded as independent opinion. But Elon Musk & Co. have tightly controlled the narrative, restricting access to the truck and the experts responsible for developing its daring design and advanced technology to a handful of friendly influencers with big followings.
Enough Cybertrucks have been delivered now, however, that outlets like MotorTrend with the resources, equipment, facilities and expertise to critically evaluate a new vehicle can get their hands and Vboxes on one. That’s exactly what we’ve done, rounding up the mainstream dual-motor Cybertruck’s two closest electric lifestyle pickup rivals for direct comparison — the 2022 Truck of the Year–winning Rivian R1T and our 2023 TOTY winner, the Ford F-150 Lightning.
Because our truck’s owner ordered an $82,335 dual-motor Cybertruck optioned to $102,235 with Foundation Series upgrades, we aligned it with a $71,700 dual-motor Rivian R1T upgraded with the Max pack battery and Performance pack options at a total cost of $102,850. The equivalent luxury-lifestyle offering from Ford is the $93,990 F-150 Lightning Platinum, which was spiffed to $94,135. Our trio of trucks is therefore matched to within 9 percent in price, an 85-horse span in power, 216 pounds in weight (with the armored-looking one scaling lightest) and with their bodies finished in colors just a page or two apart in the Pantone color-swatch book. The differences in how they drive and perform bely these seeming similarities.
We spent four days measuring objective performance, loading cargo, living with their disparate user interfaces, dicing with traffic, towing trailers and scaling California’s Pilot Rock Trail to determine which was the best luxury lifestyle electric pickup truck.
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Acceleration: Most Cybertruck coverage has focused on the three-motor Beast variant. This midlevel two-motor model splits the power and weight-to-power difference between the Ford and Rivian, and (not surprisingly) so does its performance. The mile-a-minute mark passes in 3.8 seconds versus 3.3 for the R1T (which squealed all four tires) and 4.1 for the F-150. Quarter-mile times fall similarly in line: 12.1 seconds for the Rivian versus 12.4 for the Tesla and 12.8 in the Ford, with the Cybertruck posting the highest trap speed — 110.3 mph versus 109.8 for the R1T and 106.0 for the F-150.
Braking: Stops from 60 mph are similarly tightly clumped, with the Ford and Rivian both recording 123-foot performances, though the heaviest Ford’s steel suspension dove considerably, its pads started smoking after one stop, and distances stretched by 6–7 feet in the ensuing stops. The Cybertruck’s pedal felt soft and traveled farther than the others’, but body control was excellent, and the stops were consistent if longer at 126 feet. The Rivian braked best, with a short stroke, a firm pedal and no dive.
Figure-Eight: For the moment, Tesla only offers an ostensibly off-road-focused tire, and Ford only offers touring tires. Rivian offers both, and we opted for the highway-focused Pirelli Scorpion Zero all-seasons, so it’s no shock the R1T waltzed to a winning 25.9-second, 0.72 g lap — 0.9 second ahead of the Ford and 1.4 better than the Cybertruck (also 0.6 second ahead of its four-motor sibling, without benefit of torque vectoring). Our test team reported no ability to switch stability control off in the Tesla. This greatly limited the max power available when the yoke wasn’t pointed straight ahead. Speaking of, test-meister Chris Walton reported acclimating to Tesla’s Nintendo Switch–like steer-by-wire helm quite quickly, and he appreciated its limited range of motion in this test.
All three trucks clear the 300-mile range barrier on paper, with the Rivian’s big 141-kWh battery pack giving it an 80-mile leg up on the Ford. That advantage is roughly cut in half in the real world, where the Rivian scored 264 miles in our 70-mph MT Road-Trip Range test, which uses 95 percent of a full charge. The Tesla and the Ford notched 224 and 222 miles, respectively, on the open road.
At Superchargers, Tesla jolts the Cybertruck's preconditioned battery with 250 kW of power within a minute of plugging in, returning the most range of the trio after 15 minutes of charging. Stick around for longer, and the R1T's flatter power curve adds more miles at the 30- and 45-minute marks. While it used to be that the Supercharger network gave any Tesla a major advantage in long-distance travel, that's changed now Rivians and Fords can plug into most Superchargers using an adapter. The Cybertruck isn't compatible with CCS stations as of this writing, so the R1T and Lightning actually offer more places to plug in. If Ford would fix the Lightning's in-car route planner to steer clear of slow and/or unreliable stations, it would be a real coup.
On paper, the Rivian and Tesla are both rated to lug 11,000 pounds — 1,000 more than lower-spec Lightnings, though the Platinum is rated for 8,500. We reckon few owners will have the patience to tow very much or very far, but among the easiest and most attractive things to tow would be a lithe, 3,170-pound, aero-slippery Bowlus Volterra camping trailer. We hitched one to each truck and drove a 110-mile loop consisting of 65 percent highway driving and 35 percent rural roads, averaging 50 mph overall. In this test, our real-world range dropped by about a third in the Ford and Tesla and by a quarter in the Rivian, with each ending up at about half the EPA combined range figure.
These featherweight trailers didn’t tax any of our trucks, but we were surprised by how much they kicked the Ford and Tesla around on a lumpy stretch of pavement along our route. By contrast, the Rivian felt imperturbable; it offered a screen that estimated trailer weight, towing efficiency, and range, and it kept the trailer-brake gain adjustment on the screen. Where the Tesla shone was in the ease of reversing the trailer and placing it right where we wanted, thanks to the rear-wheel and variable-ratio by-wire steering, though its rearview camera needs to add the trailer-hitch aligning line the others provide. On the downside, those kooky triangle mirrors are antithetical to towing, and the hitch location was inset too deeply to accommodate our variable-height ball adapter. Ford deserves big props for automating trailer hitch alignment and trailer reversing, but the truck didn’t notice when we disconnected the trailer, continuing to estimate towing range until we removed the trailer from memory.
Prior to launch, the Cybertruck was heralded as an apocalypse-proof, go-anywhere rover, and the gnarly look of the Goodyear Wrangler Territory RT tires strive to sell this notion. But on the trail we noticed these tires quickly caked with dirt, sliding across muddy slopes and spinning where the others’ on-road tires found grip. Comparing these tires with those on a Chevy Silverado 1500 ZR2 support vehicle wearing the same sidewall branding revealed dramatically shallower tread depth: 9/32 versus 14/32 of an inch. Off-roaders should budget for a tire upgrade and expect some drop in on-road grip and energy efficiency.
The forward camera’s fish-eye view focuses too far ahead of the Cybertruck to be useful for placing the tires on objects, and the B-pillar cameras pointed at the backs of the front tires don’t help. The F-150’s forward camera is much better aimed, but sometimes it fails to come on during back-and-forth maneuvers, and it shuts off above 5 mph.
One challenging V-notch trail featured a large boulder at the bottom and several extreme frame twists. With no locking differentials in the Tesla (they’re supposedly installed but not yet activated), the Cybertruck struggled the most on this obstacle. The Ford’s tires came off the ground almost as far, but its rear locker kept the truck moving steadily, and abundant suspension articulation kept the Rivian’s rubber on the ground as the brakes sorted out traction. Another miss: Tesla doesn’t permit drivers to gently release the brake while squeezing on the accelerator. If both pedals are pressed, power is cut. The others allow this technique. The Tesla also lacks a spare tire and assist handles to help climb aboard with the suspension jacked up.
Here the F-150’s many decades of class dominance endow it with an easy-access bed featuring a power-opening and -closing tailgate with a pull-out step. There are tie-downs where you want them, the bed and frunk are huge with power outlets in both, and it’s possible for taller folks to reach over the rails and access stuff in the bed. All the Rivian’s storage compartments are smaller, so when loading our test and photo gear we needed the gear tunnel to fit what easily stowed under the tonneaus of the other two. The R1T’s many stowage bins are well-suited to the truck’s outdoor adventure mission, but the in-bed spare tire is extremely cumbersome to extract, and there are no assists to ease climbing into the bed. There’s no 240-volt outlet in the Rivian, but there is a built-in air compressor. Our gear stacked taller in the Cybertruck (no need to fret about rear visibility, as there’s very little of it to begin with), and its L-track bed rail system offers all manner of tie-down accessories. Just remember to position front-of-bed ratchet straps before you load up, because there’s no getting at them after the bed is loaded. Similarly, you can’t easily shovel mulch out over the side rails as you might in other trucks.
Having spent a year or more in two F-150 Lightnings, we know how easy they are to acclimate to. This perennial American bestseller looks and feels “normal.” The other trucks actively seek to disrupt Ford’s comfy norm, so truck buyers should brace for a learning curve. Tesla presents a curve that’s so steep we worry about Turo renters who may not get much familiarization. A new driver venturing into a big puddle will learn that with the wheels and windshield so far forward, visibility can be completely obscured by the splash of potentially muddy water — a terrible time to learn the two-step process for activating the giga-wiper: Thumb the tiny button on the steering wheel with the windshield-washer icon, then look down and choose your wiper setting from a pop-up menu on the screen.
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Given the sheer size and surface area of the Tesla’s glazing, the truck is remarkably hard to see out of. The A- and A-plus pillars obscure a lot of what you want to see when turning, the B-pillars are very thick, and even for those who choose to take the 10 percent aero penalty by opening the tonneau cover only get a gun-slit view of what’s immediately behind. There is a laughably small inside rearview mirror, but anyone over 5 feet tall will only see the tires and bumper of a following vehicle. Tesla’s “fix” is to project a similarly small rearview camera image at the top of the center screen. We highly encourage Tesla’s accountants to greenlight a proper digital rearview mirror placed up where folks expect it. Even our resident Model Y chaperone, fluent in Tesla control strategy, found various functions tricky to discover and remember. And sure, the daily owner/user of any vehicle will likely master such idiosyncrasies, but what about said owners’ cohabitants, who only use the Cybertruck occasionally?
The Rivian isn’t without its infuriating faults, chief among being the lack of either a cancel or resume function for the cruise control and the lack of lane centering on unmapped highways.
The Lightning Platinum boasts all the traditional luxury trappings — rich leather with contrast stitching, wood, BlueCruise hands-free highway driving, heated and cooled everything, cushy multiadjustable seats, and parking sensors. By contrast, the Cybertruck delivers abject minimalism, with ultra-bright white contrast upholstery accented with LED lighting. The three-place rear bench includes lateral support for the center rider, but the seats are markedly firmer than the Ford’s. Rear-seat riders enjoy a screen of their own, and Tesla’s Premium Connectivity package enables video or music streaming, Caraoke, and internet browsing (cellular LTE signal permitting). Rivian comps LTE connectivity but will soon revert to a subscription model like Tesla and Ford offer. Ford’s screen includes several games to amuse front occupants during charging sessions. Rivian splits the Ford–Tesla opulence–starkness gap with plenty of open-pore wood, leather, metal, and sisal-look floormats.
At the end of our week with this trio, we viewed them as three distinct stairsteps out of a combustion-pickup owner’s comfort zone. Step one is the Ford, which only requires one to grapple with range and charging — everything else about this truck is luxuriously familiar (and access to most of Tesla’s Supercharger network eases the charging pain). Another hefty step up is the Rivian, which also gains Supercharger access soon. The R1T requires acclimating to a more screen-centric user interface, plus moderating expectations of what can be carried in its considerably smaller bed. The Cybertruck represents a parkour leap up and out of a traditional trucker’s comfort zone. Nearly everything about this truck and how one interfaces with it is different — sometimes wildly or dangerously so.
That said, we’re sufficiently wowed by the Tesla’s technological leap (48-volt base electrical architecture, steer-by-wire, borosilicate glass windshield, dent-proof stainless skin, etc.) to rank it ahead of Ford’s e-truck 1.0. But its lackluster towing and off-roading performance, its middling on-road performance, and the fact that form so utterly subjugates function throughout this vehicle, land it in second place behind the sleek, swift, luxurious, smooth-riding, adventure-optimized Rivian R1T.
Verdict: The safest choice for folks who frequently curse at their phones, computers, ATMs or smart TVs.
Verdict: The electric truck for digital natives who crave attention more than they do adventure.
Verdict: A just-right blend of distinctive design and accessible innovation that encourages outdoor exploration.
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