Actually a pretty decent truck Gets more attention than Donald Trump Drives like a Tesla, charges like a Tesla The cons Tesla Cybertruck: Production faces 'enormous challenges,' admits Musk 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.