YouTuber T Sportline has discovered a potential safety issue in the recently released Tesla Cybertruck. Under certain conditions, the aerodynamic hubcaps the electric truck comes equipped with may scratch tire walls until they break.
The hubcaps address the highly relevant issue of EV range, reducing drag and letting you travel farther on a charge. However, in their current implementation, they partially overlap with the tire sidewalls. Mere millimeters separate the caps from the rubber.
As the tires accumulate wear-and-tear, they tend to deform little by little and bulge at the sides. As a result, the sidewalls may start touching the wheel trims and getting scratched by them. On the truck shown in the video, which has just a little over 3,000 km (1,860 miles) on it, this damage can be clearly seen on the sidewalls. The author warns that continued use may turn these scratches into cuts and lead to incidents.
In the end, T Sportline suggests that Cybertruck owners remove the hubcaps to stay safe. Still, it’s intriguing how Tesla’s pre-production tests failed to highlight this issue, don’t you think?