Justin Martin, a renowned aeronautical engineer with decades of experience, has sketched up a 3D model of the recently revealed Tesla Cybertruck and put it to a series of virtual wind tunnel tests.
Before the experiment, Martin claimed that the airflow had to wrap around the car body smoothly in order for it to meet as little resistance as possible. He expressed concerns that the Cybertruck was too edgy to be a low-drag vehicle: the edge at the front, in particular, could cause an unwanted phenomenon called the turbulent vortex.
However, the simulations yielded different results. It turned out that the airflow rose up too little at speeds faster than 60 mph (97 km/h) to be an issue, and the vortex was within the normal values for other, traditionally shaped pickups.
The only reservation Martin made explaining the results was that he did not have the exact body proportions of the truck at hand and therefore drew up an approximate model for the test.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk had explained earlier that the Cybertruck was made of an ultra-durable variety of stainless steel that could not be molded into shape.