A full review of the Tesla Cybertruck is coming in hot. But until then, I have to give you a few nuggets from my couple of days with the stainless steel origami-truck, just to hold you over. Today’s blurb is about an incident that was entirely my fault as I’m sure Tesla fans will remind me 9,000 times even though I’m admitting it right now. It involved me backing into a parking spot, and hitting another car because of something I just didn’t account for.
I really can’t wait to tell you more about my experience driving the Cybertruck, but right now I’m in a shuttle near Palm Springs, CA, heading to the first-drive event for the 2024 Ford F-150. It’s basically a mid-cycle refresh that brings some new styling and a wacky tailgate, but it’s an important truck for America, so I gotta be here.
IÂ guess I’ll jump the Raptor in the desert for you, dear reader. But only for you.
Anyway, this shuttle ride is going to be short, and I’m about to lose internet in the desert, so I only have time to tell a short story, and this one — like so many of the stories I tell — involves me becoming victim of my own stupidity.
You may have read my article “I Had A Tesla Cybertruck For The Weekend. Here’s Why I Ended Up Driving My BMW i3 Instead.” This wasn’t a comparison between the i3 and Cybertruck, it was more of a discussion about a new concept I coined “Subconscious Comfort.” Give that a read if you haven’t. Or don’t. Either way, the article involves me returning the Cybertruck to the Galpin Ford parking lot so I could instead drive my BMW i3, which I find more “subconsciously comfortable.” Unfortunately, the Cybertruck was low on charge, and I didn’t want to just return the vehicle to the dealership with no juice, so I tried backing up into an EV parking spot. It was tight.
If you look carefully at this admittedly subpar photo I took, you can see a Kia EV6 and a Volvo (I think) behind it. Between the Kia and Volvo is a parking spot. The problem is that on the right side of that photo is another line of parked cars, so trying to back into the narrow spot without hitting the vehicles on the right side of that alley wasn’t easy.
The Cybertruck’s four-wheel steering reduces its steering radius rather dramatically, making the truck relatively nimble. Relatively. The thing is still a big truck, and no turning radius is going to change that, so as I tried squeezing between the Kia and Volvo, I had a hard time getting lined up so that I could enter the spot parallel to the lines.
The Cybertruck is outfitted with a bunch of cameras meant to help out in this type of scenario. When you back up, you can see directly behind, and you can see what’s going on on the left and ride sides behind you:
I was looking at these cameras, and at the mirrors, which are nicely sized and work quite well, and things seemed to be going OK. “With these cameras,” I should be good, I thought as I tried inching into this spot. With my right index finger, I slid the shifter (which you can see on the top left of the screen above — it’s possibly the worst shifter in industry history, but it does function, so there’s that) forward, made adjustments, then slid it back, and slowly watched my right side as it narrowly cleared the Kia EV6 on my right.
I was staring at my right mirror intently, making sure I kept away from that Kia, as things were really tight there given the angle at which I had to back into that parking spot. I made small steering adjustments and slowly crept, inch by inch, into the spot. When my right rear tire was just next to the EV6’s front bumper, I decided I needed to adjust my heading.
So I cranked the steering wheel and put the Cybertruck into Drive. Then, just as I began to drive, I glanced in the passenger mirror…
CRAPPPPP!
My eyes widened, and my heart sank. I had somehow run into the EV6! I’d been so careful to keep a gap between the Cybertruck and it, and now I was actively running into it. What the heck?!
Just as I was chewing up the Kia Ev6 with the Cybertruck, a Galpin employee walked in my direction, likely saw the struggle on my face, and helped me navigate out of my predicament. I then parked, and returned to the Kia to see what you see above.
Luckily, the only part of the Cybertruck that had hit the Kia was that big 35-inch rear passenger’s side tire’s sidewall, which — luckily — someone had completely slathered in Armor All.
The Kia EV6’s owner, also a Galpin employee, happened to grab something out of his car shortly after this incident, so I showed him what had happened. He snagged a microfiber towel and just wiped away the grease from the tire. “I don’t see any damage. Looks fine to me,” he said. I handed him my card just to be sure, but it does appear that somehow I got away with murder. And by murder, I really mean my own inability to account for the Cybertruck’s rear-wheel steering.
I think, intuitively, all drivers are used to accounting for their front wheels steering. If you parallel park right next to a curb, you’re probably not going to crank the wheel all the way when you drive off; otherwise, your wheel will hit. When you’re parking nose-first into a tight spot, your front tires rarely get that close to another vehicle because by the time your car’s face has cleared the vehicle next to you, it pretty much guarantees plenty of space between your wheel and the car in the other spot. But when you back up, it’s fairly typical to have a really narrow gap between your car and the car next to you — a gap that you increase as you back up and then crank the wheel to straighten up, pulling your vehicle’s front end away from the neighboring vehicle.
With the Cybertruck, you just have to be mindful of this gap. Because if, like me, you crank your wheel to straighten out, you’ll also be cranking those rear wheels. I’m not 100% sure that the truck that I drove had its rear steering angle upped from 3 degrees to 10 degrees via Tesla’s software update, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had.
Anyway, I got away with this one, but boy did I feel like a fool accidentally “rear-steering” into another car.
It’s really crazy, but my KIA Niro EV has the charger on the front and I don’t have to pull the grandpa and back into charging spaces. What a coup!!!!!
As the previous owner of a 4WS Prelude Si, I immediately knew this was what David did before reading past the headline.
One of my favorite cars that I’ve ever owned was a 1990 Honda Prelude SI 4WS. There’s a diagram in the owners manual warning drivers of this very predicament.
See page 63 of the the manual.
I cannot understand why anyone would buy a car that required the use of a touchscreen for basic control input. Entertainment system- maybe. But gear shifting and wipers and whatever else?
Physical controls for such are not _legacies_, from the days when automotive technology was crude. They’re meant for immediate and direct and obvious control- so that a driver can react to changing conditions without having to think their way through.
The touch screen stuff looks cool and clean and “The Car of Tomorrow; today!”, which I get- but it is _actually_ cheap and awkward and cost cutting from the manufacturer. Which they’re _selling_as cool and clean and “The Car of Tomorrow; today!”
Jumping Jesus, this thing. Corners sharp enough to gash flesh, doors that can chop off fingers. Wheel covers that shred into the tire. Can be disabled by washing, can start to corrode from normal weather exposure. No real bed capacity. Hard to see out of. Difficult to park.
This, I think, is a form of signaling, and that’s all that is. For the company, for the owners. It’s not meant to drive farther than the country club or the Sam’s parking lot. To be parked as a symbol for the rest of us. I have enough money to blow on this metal retardation!
Well. Maybe. Like the sixty year old men I see driving around in new Corvettes, or gleaming black luxury trucks- the owner wants to demonstrate status.
But the status isn’t going as well- as in the other cases- as they might think.
Any control you interact with regularly should be a physical button.
Now get off my lawn.
Try it, ya might like it. I’m considering retiring all my other vehicles for just my CT and Y. That’s a BRZ, Fiesta ST, and ram MegaCab.