David Bridges
Tesla CEO Elon Musk suddenly started discussing Tesla Cybertruck yesterday on the verge of today’s AI Day 2 event. More interestingly he posted an entire Twitter thread explaining how amphibious the Cybertruck will be.
“Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy,” Musk posted the first tweet out of three.
Since the unveiling of the Cybertruck back in 2019, neither Tesla nor Elon Musk talked about its amphibious capabilities. Just yesterday, Musk unfolded this secret to the world.
“Needs be able to get from Starbase to South Padre Island, which requires crossing the channel,” Musk said in a follow-up tweet in this discussion.
So, I checked out Google Maps to see the distance and the path from Starbase, Boca Chica, Texas to South Padre Island. It’s a 39.8 miles (~64 km) long path and requires you to drive away from the island first and take a big u-turn to return to the destination (see Google Map screenshot below).
I used a red line to mark the direct path that the Cybertruck can take from Starbase to South Padre Island. The amphibious capability of the Cybertruck would shorten the time and distance it takes to cross the seawater channel between these two locations.
Elon Musk did not respond to further questions about Cybertruck’s wading depth and max duration of being submerged.
Cybertruck is made of 30X cold-rolled stainless steel, so owners will be less concerned about its body getting rusted due to using the amphibious mode.
However, as Cybertruck is one of the most polarizing and viral products of the 21st century yet, fans and enthusiasts did visualize some amphibious concepts for it. Like in the following video where a man enjoying an oceanic journey while sitting on the bed of a Cybertruck as it floats on the sea surface — pretty wild but interesting.
A Seattle-based startup has already come up with the idea of transforming a Cybertruck into an amphibious vehicle. The company has designed an electric catamaran concept called Cybercat that converts the Cybertruck to become a watercraft (video below).
Tesla plans to start Cybertruck production late next year at its Gigafactory in Austin, Texas where the automaker is currently producing Model Y mid-size electric SUVs.
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