Musk’s new brainfart – transforming Cybertrucks into boats – sails straight into absurdity.
Elon Musk, Tesla‘s CEO and notorious for his pie-in-the-sky ideas, has lobbed yet another far-fetched concept into the public arena: transforming the Tesla Cybertruck into a makeshift boat. You haven’t misread – he’s seriously talking about a boat. This isn’t your typical vehicle tweak; it’s a bizarre twist that has set the internet ablaze with both ridicule and disbelief.
The seed of this latest Musk misadventure was planted during an episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage.” There, Tesla’s design honcho, Franz von Holzhausen, and the VP of Vehicle Engineering, Lars Moravy, offhandedly remarked that the Cybertruck “almost floats.” It was a throwaway line, suggesting the far-fetched notion of slapping an outboard motor onto this hulking truck to create some kind of amphibious vehicle. But, like a moth to a flame, Musk couldn’t resist. He took to his social media haunt, X, not just to toy with this idea, but to announce, with his usual bravado, that Tesla is seriously concocting a “mod package” to turn this fantasy into a questionable reality.
We are going to offer a mod package that enables Cybertruck to traverse at least 100m of water as a boat.
Mostly just need to upgrade cabin door seals.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2023
On his social media platform X, Musk, who is infamous for peddling more hype than substance, claimed that this nautical nonsense would involve merely beefing up the Cybertruck’s cabin door seals. This, in his overactive imagination, would supposedly enable the Cybertruck to ‘sail’ at least 100 meters (328 feet) – coincidentally, just enough to cross from SpaceX’s Starbase to South Padre Island in Texas, a Musk-branded fantasy scenario.
The concept of a truck moonlighting as a boat, predictably, has raised more than a few skeptical eyebrows. Critics are tearing apart the idea, questioning everything from its practicality to the sheer absurdity of making a 6,700-pound behemoth buoyant. Musk, in a rare moment of near-self-awareness, conceded that for the Cybertruck to achieve anything faster than a sluggish drift, it would need an electric propeller hitched to the back and some kind of fanciful wheel hub design for meaningful propulsion.
However, alluring as this flight of fancy sounds, the so-called boat mode of the Cybertruck seems more like a flashy emergency gimmick or a novelty toy rather than a genuine boating solution. Even Musk’s own words hint at it being suitable only for brief jaunts or perhaps as a quirky escape pod in flood scenarios, rather than any serious aquatic expedition. And let’s not gloss over the impracticality of actually getting this oversized hunk of metal into the water – a logistical nightmare that Musk conveniently overlooks.
Then there’s the “Cybercat,” a design concept that supposedly turns the Cybertruck into a catamaran. This far-fetched idea might be fueling Tesla’s boat mode pipe dream. While Musk and his crew are never short on wild, headline-grabbing “innovations,” the practicality of a boat-mode Cybertruck is as murky as a muddy riverbed.
True to Elon Musk’s flair for theatrical announcements, this latest proclamation has stirred a mix of excitement and heavy skepticism. It’s yet another display of Tesla’s knack for blurring the lines between visionary and vaudevillian in vehicle design. Whether this overambitious project will smoothly sail or disastrously sink is anyone’s guess, but it’s certainly stirred up plenty of chatter and head-shaking wonder. So, the next time you find yourself marooned in a flood, Musk would have you believe your Cybertruck could be your great aquatic escape – a notion as ludicrous as it sounds.
