LAUNCH CONTROL

Tesla has finally unlocked the Cybertruck's off-road potential. We grab a rival and head to the desert for a baptism of fire...

- JACK RIX & OLLIE MARRIAGE

A NAKED CAR IN A NAKED PLACE.

Hours from LA and light years from its celebrity culture the Cybertruck sits in a desert, as if sent from the future by Skynet.

If it had zapped into existence on bolts of electricity, that would be no less believable than it driving here. It is not of this world. It's a bewildering, alien machine.

So let's bring it crashing down to earth. Both metaphorically and literally at 60mph from about a metre above the deck. Then we'll bounce it back up again through some whoops, scramble over rocks to the sky, plunge through sand dunes and a whole lot more.

Put it through earth's off-road wringer, in other words. Because TopGear is the first in the world to drive a Cybertruck with all its off-road modes and camping tricks activated. We've got fully operational diff locks to go with a foot of height adjustable air suspension, we've got Baja mode, plus a light bar, Cybertent and Cybercooler. We've also got more than one Cybertruck. An 845bhp tri-motor (with light bar) is here for the drag racing, drifting and camping, while a 600bhp dual motor does the rest. Both have the full off-road suite; the dual motor has mechanical locking diffs at both ends, while the tri-motor has a virtual rear diff - no physical connection, but individual torque vectoring and trick software to mimic it.

We've also brought along a little competition. You don't need us to tell you the Cybertruck is a lifestyle adventure pickup rather than a workhorse, so rather than Ford's F-150 Lightning or the GMC Hummer EV, here we have the RIT, a pickup from another west coast startup, Rivian. Complete with Yakima roof tent and front end styling closer to Baymax than the Terminator. It's an 835bhp quad motor and costs $87,000 before options. The dual motor Tesla costs from $79,990, while the tri-motor Cyberbeast is $20k more.