Pickup truck reinvented

Four years after its first appearance, deliveries of the Tesla Cybertruck are underway and the vehicle hitting the production line is groundbreaking not just in the context of pickup trucks, but automobiles in general as Dhruv Saxena elaborates

When Tesla’s Cybertruck first made an appearance in November 2019, many seemed sceptical about how much of the original prototype would successfully transition to its production form. Four years of development later, the final ready-for-sale version has all but retained the outlandish exterior and has redefined several aspects of automobile engineering and production along the way. The exterior panels, for instance, are of a special grade of stainless steel to ensure corrosion resistance because regular stainless steel isn’t. Bending it to form the panels required Tesla engineers to use what they describe as basically ‘air bending’ to get the right shape without leaving any marks at the creases.