2024 Tesla Cybertruck Dual Motor Foundation Series first drive: Love it or hate it?

The pros

• Actually a pretty decent truck
• Gets more attention than Donald Trump
• Drives like a Tesla, charges like a Tesla

The cons

• Compromised in every way by its design
• Spartan interior takes minimalism too far
• Doesn't live up to the hype

You've heard it said that a good compromise leaves everyone upset. Whether you agree with that cynical point of view or not, it perfectly encapsulates the 2024 Tesla Cybertruck. Whether you love the Cybertruck and you're hoping to read it's the greatest truck ever made, or you hate it and you're hoping to read it's a steaming pile, you're going to be disappointed. In truth, it's a pretty good truck hamstrung by a series of needless compromises for the sake of vanity.

Its function follows its form

The Cybertruck would be a better truck were it not for the design. Love its looks or not, its dystopian triangular styling has forced a number of compromises to functionality that are entirely unforced errors. The fact it's as good a vehicle as it is is a testament to Tesla's engineers and an indictment of Elon Musk's insistence on it looking like this.

The pointy roof alone is responsible for a number of visibility problems. The massive pillars needed to support it are only partially offset by the enormous amounts of glass they frame, and then only if you crane your neck far enough. Making a left turn across traffic is particularly perilous as the combination of pillar and door mirror make it very difficult to see traffic coming from the right. That massive single wiper is another concession to the truck's unusual design. Its size and weight mean that at maximum speed it shakes the entire truck.

Behind you, the sloping roof and low-mounted rear crossmember obscure rear visibility, even with the tonneau cover open. Vehicles more than six or seven car lengths behind — a safe following distance freeway speeds — are completely invisible. And likely in the name of saving a few dollars in cost, Tesla eschewed a video screen in the rearview mirror for a rearview camera feed in the large central screen. It makes the physical rearview mirror feel as though it's only there for legal purposes. And while you can move the camera feed to one of two locations on the big display, training yourself to look down to see what's behind you will take quite a lot of time.

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Oh, and don't bother trying to see what's behind your Cybertruck if you have the turn signal on, because the video feed from the rear is replaced with one of the blind spot cameras if you have those enabled. Don't try to bring up the vehicle control menu, either, if you have the rearview video feed in the top center of the screen, because the menu goes behind it and blocks access to all the most important controls in a very obvious programming oversight.

What about cargo?

Since you can't see anything out the back anyway, the smart thing to do is just leave the tonneau cover closed and enjoy the range benefit. Plus, you won't need to worry about stacking cargo up to the roof, as there's no rear view to block. The vertical space in the bed really helps offset how small the Cybertruck's front trunk is.

While the bed is as large as any other full-size four-door truck's, you can plainly see it's less useful. The massive sail panels make it impossible to reach cargo or tie-down points in the bed from the sides, so your only option is to go in from the back. And if you if you need something that's buried up at the front of the bed, you'll either have to climb over everything else or empty the bed to get to it.

We do appreciate the standard modular tie-down rails on both sides of the bed, though we can't imagine why the movable tie-downs are held in with Torx screws rather than a simple release mechanism. At least you can buy aftermarket parts to connect to them and toss the factory pieces. Regardless, you'll want to connect your tie-down straps to the forward cleats before you load anything else in the bed or you'll never reach them.

Even the pointy door mirrors are a compromise to design. Shaving off the top corners has made it harder to see traffic to either side of you on the highway for no other reason than to make them fit the triangular design motif.

Can you hitch it up?

As you can imagine, these mirrors make it harder to back a trailer, as well. It's too bad, because the rear steering and super-quick steering ratio make reversing a trailer a breeze. Rather than palming the wheel or going hand over hand to make corrections, you just make small inputs in the steering wheel, and the trailer goes exactly where you want. Hooking up would be easier if Tesla would overlay the path of the hitch on the backup camera screen like other trucks do, but it's not a deal-breaker.

As with any electric truck, towing is effortless. The weight of the trailer makes the Cybertruck accelerate less aggressively and slower to stop, but far less so than in a combustion-powered pickup. Getting up to speed is a breeze if you put your foot in it, as are climbing grades and passing on the highway.

Naturally, towing puts a big dent in range. Tesla says the dual-motor Cybertruck will go 318 miles in Foundation Series trim. We hooked a 3,170-pound Bowlus Volterra travel trailer to it and sawed the range in half to just 160 miles with a mix of highway and suburban driving at an average speed of 50 mph. At least with the abundance of Tesla Superchargers nationwide and newer stations being built to accommodate trucks with trailers, it's less an issue than it's made out to be.

We do wish the Cybertruck were more confident towing over bad pavement, though. By itself, the truck rides shockingly well and makes most bumps disappear under its flamboyant-looking tires. Hook up a trailer, though, and everything changes. Even a fairly light 3,170-pound travel trailer pushes the truck around on rough pavement and wrecks the ride quality. The driver is constantly fighting shunts from the trailer, fraying nerves and sapping confidence.

The reality check

Back to the Superchargers for a moment, those charging sessions are going to be a bit longer than you might be used to if you' re already a Tesla owner. Although it peaked at 252 kW in our test, the Cybertruck's 123-kWh battery is the biggest Tesla makes, and bigger batteries take longer to fill. Charging from 5 percent to 80 percent took 42 minutes, 10 minutes longer than a Model Y Long Range and just 4 minutes quicker than a Ford F-150 Lightning or Rivian R1T.

That extra time will add up on road trips. Whatever the exact range is, it's far less than the 500 miles Tesla originally promised. In our Road-Trip Range test (driving 70 mph on the highway until the battery drops from 100 percent to 5 percent), the Cybertruck made it just 224 miles. That's 5 miles less than that Model Y despite having a much bigger battery that takes longer to charge. Make sure you plan for that before you head off down the interstate or out into the wilderness.

Range isn't the only undelivered promise. Tesla also originally quoted a payload capacity of up to 3,500 pounds and missed the mark by 1,000 pounds. Still, at 2,500 pounds, the Cybertruck bests the Lightning. Then again, the Ford will tow more than 13,000 pounds, and despite Tesla's promise of a 14,000-pound max, it can actually only pull 11,000. We've already covered the "bulletproof" claim, which isn't really something you need (hopefully), and we're not touching the "float like a boat" thing. The $40,000 starting price is a definite no. Then there's the matter of it supposedly being "apocalypse-proof."

Off-road it, if you dare

Do not believe Tesla's hype about the Cybertruck being unstoppable or ready for any terrain in the universe. While they're butched-up with massive sidewall lugs specifically for the Cybertruck, the custom-spec Goodyears actually have much less tread than a standard Goodyear Wrangler Territory all-terrain tire. In order to improve handling and range, they've been shaved down by 4/32 an inch compared to the same tire on a Chevrolet Silverado 1500 ZR2 (the equivalent of thousands of miles of wear), giving it significantly less grip off-road. Worse, they easily cake up with mud, further reducing traction.

On a fairly easy off-road trail, the Cybertruck spun its tires more readily and more often than our support truck, which was wearing its highway tire option. Part of this was an underdeveloped traction control system that allowed far more wheelspin than the support truck before engaging individual brakes to send power to the opposite wheel. A bigger part was the fact that months after customer deliveries began, the differential lockers are still non-functional, which is bizarre because they're simple lockers that are either on or off and should take minimal programming to enable. Then there's the fact you can't overlap the pedals, a very common trick off-road to smooth out driving over big obstacles. It's clear that if Tesla has any off-road experts on its development team, no one is listening to them.

There are other problems off-road, as well. The massive dashboard (don't set things there, or you'll need a trash picker to get them back) makes it difficult to see what's in front of the vehicle even when you get up out of your seat, and the front camera looks a bit too far ahead and isn't pointed far enough down toward the ground. It also strangely enables the rear-facing side cameras rather than the forward-facing ones, so you can't get a look at what's going on around your front wheels and how close you are to obstacles. And there's no way to change this.

Then there's the matter of the aerodynamic spats just in front of the rear tires. They hang down and are prone to catching on obstacles, which will rip them right out of their mounting holes. We also have concerns about the placement of the charging port in the fender flare, where it's in danger of being damaged by trees and rocks during serious off-roading. Oh, and there's the fact the Cybertruck has no standard spare tire. You're definitely gonna want to get one of those before you venture out onto the trail.

If you want to do any actual off-roading with this Tesla, you have some work to do before you hit the trail. In the event of the apocalypse, anyone with a unmodified Cybertruck will want to stick to roads.

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By the numbers

The tires also compromise handling and stopping on pavement. Although it does both competitively, you can tell from behind the squared-off steering yoke it could do even better on a street tire, which Tesla isn't offering as of now. Similarly, it would be far more capable off-road with a real all-terrain tire. These tires are jacks of all trades and masters of none.

This is clear from our test data. Tesla engineers have leveraged their excellent on-road traction control to make the Cybertruck launch harder than a Model 3 Dual Motor. This dual-motor Foundation Series truck packs 593 hp and 525 lb-ft of torque, enough to push the 6,660-pound stainless-steel attention magnet to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds and through a quarter mile in 12.4 seconds at 110.3 mph. That's quick, but a heavier Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum with less power will do it in 4.0 seconds on a street tire, so the Cybertruck's tires are holding it back.

It becomes more obvious stopping and turning. A 126-foot stop from 60 mph is good, but that same chunky Lightning will do it in 118 feet. Put the Tesla into a corner, and it'll pull 0.76 average lateral g, slightly less than the Lightning's 0.77. It only gets worse in our figure-eight test, where the Cybertruck needs 27.3 seconds to complete a lap at 0.67 g average to the Ford's 27.1 seconds at 0.68 g average. This despite the Tesla's lighter weight, greater power, quick-ratio steer-by-wire, and rear steering.

And while all the steering tech makes the truck feel super maneuverable, at 43.5 feet, its turning circle is basically the same as any other full-size pickup truck's, making you wonder how bad it would be if it didn't have rear steering. At least there's no clumsy fumbling with the steering yoke like you get in the Model S and X. In the Cybertruck, it turns from lock to lock in less than 360 degrees.

As you'd expect, there's zero steering feel in this entirely by-wire system. This, combined with the ride quality and the general isolation from the outside world, makes the Cybertruck feel slower than it actually is. You never quite feel like the truck is accelerating as quickly as the stats say it is or that you're going as fast as the speedometer says.

Around corners, it handles more like a Range Rover than a pickup truck. It's very similar to the way a Rivian R1T handles: excellent for a truck, great for an SUV, and pretty good for a sedan. It's hardly a supercar as Musk has suggested, but it is fun to a point, even as the notion lingers that the tires are holding it back. Whereas that Rivian feels like you can just keep leaning on it, there comes a point with the Cybertruck where you don't want to push any harder because you know it's just going to understeer. That limit is high, but it clearly could be higher.

The same on the inside

The steering yoke exists, so far as we understand, because Musk wanted it to. While the setup isn't applied properly to the Model S and X, the engineers took this opportunity to get it right. Even with the super-quick steering ratio, though, the squircle-shaped yoke is little more than a novelty. Honestly, it's so small it feels like steering a nearly 3.5-ton truck with a Nintendo Switch.

It's another flagrant concession to design. Up until now, Tesla has successfully rebranded minimalist interior design as chic and forward-thinking. The Cybertruck takes it so far, though, that it appears unfinished. All straight lines and no physical controls to speak of beyond the steering wheel and pedals, it looks more like a placeholder than a finished interior, something you'd see in an early-iteration concept car or a movie prop.

As with other Teslas, the move away from physical controls creates a situation in which basic functions are a multistep process. The massive windshield wiper doesn't have an automatic mode yet, so turning it on requires pushing a touch-sensitive button on the steering wheel and then selecting a speed on the screen. That's two different controls in two different places to do something that nearly everyone else does with one physical control.

Bringing back panel gaps

The interior is assembled well, but we couldn't say the same for the exterior. Most of the advancements the Model 3 made in build quality and panel alignment didn't apply to this Cybertruck. This brand-new $100,000 truck had multiple panels that didn't line up with their neighbors, including one that didn't fit flush at all. There were sharp stainless-steel corners sticking out in multiple places where they shouldn't, and the panel gaps range from just uneven to downright atrocious. Look in your sideview mirrors, and you can see the waves in the body panels themselves. You can also see the smudgy fingerprints down the trailing edge of each door; these will be a permanent calling card for Cybertrucks because that's where everyone grabs the doors to close them.

The truck as a statement piece

All of this said, there's a certain honesty to the Cybertruck. In a world saturated with overland builds festooned with every piece of off-road equipment known to man but which never leave the pavement, the Cybertruck speaks plainly. Everyone knows you bought it because you think it looks cool and everyone you know and will ever meet will want to take pictures of it and go for a ride in it. In the land of pavement machines, the Cybertruck rules.