Well, I would say the test results were conclusive, if nothing else.
The thing about “wading” in deep water is the water has to be pushed aside by the vehicle like the bow of a ship. Except in a car, if you go too fast the water won’t be pushed aside and will instead rip off bumpers, underside panels, and forcefully enter the vehicle dousing motors, electronics, air intakes etc. Of course the Cybertruck is a terrible truck and was sold on lies and embellishments, but common sense also applies. Even most ICE vehicles including trucks would fare no better unless they had snorkels and other mitigations.
May have gotten better results with a Ford. It’s right there in the name.
/obligatory: don’t actually try to ford a river with a Ford
Fjord Focus
don’t actually try to ford a river with a Ford
Actually someone do it, and please livestream it for better experience.
Well that video was about as pathetic as you would imagine. It’s about 4 ft offshore when it fails when the driver gets out it’s below waist height. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a bus drive through deeper puddles than that.
There’s something to say about how an idiot you must be to buy a Cybertruck to start with: it’s less capable than other electric (or not electric) pick-up, it’s unecessarily big, it’s fragile and expensive, and owning one doesn’t convey the image of their buyers they think it conveys.
And so not surprisingly, that pool of people counts amongst the biggest idiots who will do these kind of idiot tests.
I can’t but wonder how many CT buyers would be dead by now if Musk had claimed the CT can glide.
paying 100k+ for the cybertruck is already absurd. only 2types of people i see buying it magats that want to stick it to the libs because ELON started supporting them, and politically ignorant asians of elons drama.
Serious question: would there be a risk of electrocution with that much stored electrical energy being submerged in water?
Once the electrics on the car short out the batteries would have gone into a safe mode when no charge has been sent. Although it is a cyber truck so it is possible it will randomly catch fire.
Probably not, though with lithium batteries it would be unsurprising if it blew up.
Yes, and you’d have to choose between getting electrocuted by the truck or getting mauled by the sharks
Seems like no one else does cause three people downvoted it lol
Oh yes, that would be the very famous, Freshwater Texan Lakeshark.
1700s oxen towed wagons: can be floated down river if sealed properly. Oxen sometimes poop.
2023 cybertrucks designed by modern engineers. Dies instantly in water. No poop.
It wasn’t designed by modern engineers it was designed by Elon Musk.
Bro out here playing the fool’s Oregon Trail.
For real, acting like fording the river is just a given. I’ve tipped multiple times trying to ford the same river over and over, because once you try once, you gotta just keep trying.
I love how the picture of that trashcan in the water has this black and white effect applied like it’s 1933 and somebody accidentally dropped a garbage can off the docks into the harbour
Look, it didn’t work this time, but don’t stop encouraging Cybertruck drivers to use their vehicles in water!
They are fully submersible submarines, after all. I hear one guy got all the way to the Titanic in one!
If they can take a bullet, I’m pretty sure they can handle a little water. This was user error. Elon wouldn’t lie and sell us junk.
Next they should try shooting it with some 5.56 while in it
“Hold on. I just put you on speaker. Can you please explain what happened again for my coworkers? Its been a stressful day and I think they could use a laugh.” - car insurance lady
Obviously, wading ain’t swimming. The mode is probably useful in some edge cases. Driving straight into a lake just isn’t one of them.
Inconclusive. I think we need a few more volunteers to give it a try. Sample sizes of 1 are not scientific enough for me.
There may be ‘downstream’ issues if we bury too many cybertrucks in lakes, though…
Thankfully the power windows didn’t lock up, and the people inside got out safely.
That could have been the best Darwin Award of the month, maybe year.According to Fox 4, the driver is being held in Grapevine Jail as of Tuesday afternoon, with violations including:
Having no valid boat registration.That is both hilarious and stupid. You would have to imagine the definition of a boat would be something that floats, which the Cybertruck clearly isn’t in this photo. It’s also less water than the truck is rated in the owner’s manual to be able to handle.
Well, I think it’s not wrong to apply the same rules to any kind of vessel you take into the water. Therefore, it’s good to simply assume that every vessel in the water is some kind of boat so people don’t say ‘well akshually this is not a boat’ and do bullshit like this cybertruck driver.
A vessel, in a marine context, is typically something that floats.
You act as though there aren’t already definitions for these things. You don’t treat a child’s pool float the same as an ocean liner.
This got me thinking, you’re right, how can it be a boat if it can’t float?
Turns out, everything is bigger in Texas, including the legal definition of what constitutes a boat.
Is it motorized, above 14 feet in length, and afloat, docked, or stored on Texas waters? Then it’s a boat that needs to be registered, fam.
It’s not really on Texas waters, is it though?
I’ve read that, and I don’t think any reasonable person would consider a vehicle being driven on a lake bed to be a vessel.
Maybe, but a reasonable person also wouldn’t drive a car into a lake.
No, but its owner was storing it in a lake, it’s over 14’ long, and has a (non-functional) motor.
Have an accident where you drive off a bridge in Texas, get charged with not having a boat registration.
I wonder if they charged the guy who crashed his Veyron in Galveston Bay? I mean with something other than insurance fraud.
I was trying to figure out why that name sounded familiar. I hadn’t heard of the story you referenced. I’m also pretty sure I’ve never been near anywhere with that name, though I think I might have encountered a road with a similar one.
Eventually, I remembered a book my then 5yo gave me after it was withdrawn from the school library and offered as a “keep forever” book.
The book did tell an interesting story partially based on real life first person accounts of a famous storm / flood, but overall it was fictional. There were some details I thought were inappropriate. I don’t know if those details (casual racism and acceptance of same, both by otherwise redeemable characters and by the victims of it; fairly graphic representation of bodily harm) match the reality of the time but, to put it bluntly, I agree with whomever made the decision to withdraw the book from a children’s library.
(I’m not sure what age group has access to the library. I do think it’s important for schools to allow access to uncomfortable facts, especially of history … But again, my kid was five at the time, so presumably other similarly aged kids also had access and I don’t think that they needed to hear these stories at that age.
My kid didn’t read, nor appear to want to read, the book, but given that they get freaked out by my surgery scars I don’t think that they would have benefited from doing so.)
I don’t know if those details (casual racism and acceptance of same, both by otherwise redeemable characters and by the victims of it; fairly graphic representation of bodily harm) match the reality of the time
1900 Texas, yeah, it matches the reality of the time. We’re talking about a state that 40 years before that had voted overwhelmingly to secede from the Union and ousted their governor when he refused to join the Confederacy. We’re talking full on Jim Crow, segregation as law, redlining, employment gating, etc etc - it was very bad.
But yeah I mean I probably wouldn’t say a 5yo should be engaging with that content, but I could see a 10 year old maybe? It feels 6th grade level is about right for that?
This would mean every vehicle used to launch a boat would be considered a boat in it’s own right. As well as the trailer.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t tend to store my truck or trailer in the lake?
Neither did this guy, at least not intentionally.
It seems like a vehicle being driven in a body of water is considered a vessel, and that’s just absurd.
But he did intentionally drive it out there with the intent to use it as a boat.
It’s really not absurd. If you’re going to attempt to use your truck as a boat, you’re going to hit by both sides of consequences.
No it says stored. And thus was “stored” not by choice but it was.
A submersible is a vessel.
It’s also not submerged, not entirely.
Submarines dont have to be underwater to still be submersibles.
Sailors are big fans of the boat floating when they want to get on and off the thing. The alternatives are…not so great.
Even submersibles float, just underwater.
The whole thing is absurd.
Submersibles always float, even when above the water line. They retain their state as submarines regardless of where and whence they float.
Even in dry dock, where they “float” in the air due to steel beams, they are still submarines.
Well, THAT’S comedy gold for me! laughs out loud
And, well, some laws are kinda stupid. After hearing a few of other examples it doesn’t surprise me that you could end up in jail because of this kind of a law.
They are just keeping the driver there until they determine if he got hit in the head stupid or born stupid.
Change it to “no valid submarine registration”
If I had a nickel every time a Cybertruck driver re-enacted the end of The Perfect Storm while casting themselves as George Clooney, I would have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Comedy gold.
I’d say weird except it was advertised as a hybrid boat (and would have been advertised as a rocket or plane too if he’d thought of it) so like, doing what you are told it can do is not stop weird.
They key word there is “advertised”. Remember, bonless chicken wings don’t have to be boneless. In the US, if your advertisement isn’t lieing, you aren’t trying.
doing what you are told it can do is not [too] weird.
It is when it sounds unlikely and the ones making the claim are notorious for constant embellishments and flat out falsehoods
😂 Some of the time, the jokes are hard to shoehorn into the articles. This time? The jokes practically wrote themselves
Wade Mode is a feature in the Tesla Cybertruck that allows it to drive through shallow water by raising the suspension and pressurizing the battery to protect it from water and debris. It is designed for use in bodies of water up to approximately 32 inches deep at slow speeds of 1-3 mph.
Should have called it creek mode.
Everything I’ve learned about flood water makes me think this “wade mode” thing is a lawsuit waiting to happen, especially given all the cybertruck’s other issues (like the hidden emergency door handles.)
Can’t see the bottom of the road due to all the fast-moving, murky water? “Don’t worry, I’ve got wade mode!” - famous last words before driving a cybertruck into a concealed ditch and getting swept away by unseen, underwater currents.
As if foolish people need extra confidence to do dangerous things. I might trust a traditional truck with this feature, but that’s just because most other vehicle manufacturers don’t appear to be trying to kill their customers. Tesla, on the other hand…
32 inches
That’s 81cm. Up to! That means, you need to stay below that. Since no natural body of water has completely even ground this effectively means if deeper than knee-deep you risk your battery exploding.
Something I’m sure any normal truck could handle without an extra mode.
I mean EVs are better of course, but why make a truck that is too low and probably has the battery at the bottom like normal Teslas do… Why, oh why, Elon. Choke on your stupid business decisions and unsold bad quality products.
The way the vehicle is tilted on one side it definitely went over that. Crazy they decided to take it in there, and that far.
With all cybertruck stories you have to take into account the type of person that buys one, and not just the bad product itself.
The lower the mass sits, the better the truck handles.
If you have something heavy (like a battery pack) which you need to include in the design somewhere, putting it as low to the ground as safely possible is the right choice. So that’s not a stupid decision at all. It’s what literally all EV makers do because it’s objectively the right way to place the battery pack.Watching that clip, I don’t see the typical signs of a battery fire. So I guess, wade mode did in fact keep the battery dry. Wading through a stream reaching to the top of the wheels would probably work fine. But if you stay in the water, it eventually gets through to some electronics and power is cut off by the overcurrent protection. So just don’t do that.
Normal trucks can wade water as high as their air intake, which usually is above one of the front wheels, inside the fender. You can go a bit above that for short distances if you keep a good momentum and create a wave in front of you, but that’s risky.
Of course modern trucks, having turned from work to luxury vehicles, may have issues.
Not that I know such things but from what I know you don’t want to unless you’ve waterproofed the electrical connections. You might be able to but it will accelerate corrosion.
Old trucks dgaf, 12-24V circuits handled water just fine, after all they already are splash (and pressure wash) proof. And if you don’t have electronic injection, the engine only needs electricity for the starter motor.
Old trucks gaf. Idk why you’d think otherwise. Most plugs are not expected to be submerged. If you go so old that there’s no powertrain electronics (which tends to also predate water resistant electrical connections), water is still going to accelerate corrosion at connections, especially chassis ground taps. Submerging it is how you ask for undiagnosed gremlins. Sounds fine for a trail rig, doesn’t sound fine if you still want your legally mandated lights to function.
Plus, it’s especially problematic when you get water inside the cabin. Tons of unprotected connections in there.
In MY old truck, which I rarely got into the water because the water near where I live would have carried me away, the lowest electrical components in the cabin would have been on top of the center console. Well, if you exclude the courtesy lights in the doors.
And while I didn’t get it in the water often, I knew plenty of people who did, we had a brand fan club.Unfortunately my offroading days are long behind me, so I don’t know what’s the norm today.
air intake, which usually is above one of the front wheels, inside the fender.
That sounds wrong. Even on my normal car it’s at the top of the whole engine compartment, thus slightly higher than inside the fender, and less likely to get water sprayed.
If you search “truck snorkel” images, where the tube starts on the outside is where the air filter intake is.
work to luxury vehicles
Still plenty of work trucks about. They didn’t stop making them because some pavement princess wanted all the options.
Totally disagree. Every single generation the bed gets smaller, the body gets bigger and the engine is moved further back for a lower center of gravity.
37%
Hmm, same % you see again and again in US political polls. Coincidence?
Again you’re just comparing the top of the line options.
A single cab 150 is still available to purchase.
You’ve been done in by someone pushing an agenda by obscuring facts.
And yet, find me one parked on a lot (you know, where fleets buy from). In fact, look at every work truck* you see on your way home and count how many are reg cabs vs ext 4 door /crew with a 5.5 ft box. Bet you irl you see at least 4 crew to every reg, if not more.
Work truck: something with company decals or ladders / equipment attached.
Yeah but the engine, suspensions, etc have shifted towards comfort rather than ruggedness, and those are mostly the same for all models.
That said I come from a place where we are used to real work vehicles, say Mercedes sprinter or Iveco Daily, and the comparison to American pick-up trucks is just ridiculous.
Yeah, I mean why not make a normal truck design with the battery in the cargo area?
Blocked storm water drain puddle mode?
Wading is specifically for shallow water. I think it’s aptly named.
Rules out lakes.
That depends on how deep you go. You can definitely wade in a lake as long as you turn back soon enough. Apparently, the one in the OP never got deep enough to exceed the rating.
This one definitely exceeded the rating. Its slanted on one side pretty deep. Earlier in the video it was okay and not exceeding it.
Interestingly, it appears to drift in the videos - unclear if while it is powered on if it exceeds the depth rating. I lean towards no? I can’t find any extended section of the video where it is either foundering or floating while in motion.
It 100% exceeds the depth rating later (like in your screencap), but it’s floating or sliding into deeper water after being bricked.
Ya i was just going off the video in this post where it skips from ‘acceptable’ height to you’re fucked height. Its possible it failed in the stated limits as well, we just dont see it.
I don’t understand what “wade mode” does?
If there’s an air intake, it’s just for cooling, not combustion. So like what is the point of “moving it to a snorkel position” or whatever?
There’s a photo of what it does. Absolutely nothing good, ruins the car and takes you to jail 😂
ruins the car and takes you to jail
In that case, Cybertrucks should all have it enabled by default 😁
IIRC it pressurizes the battery compartment so that water can’t get in and probably some other crap too
Pressurizes battery compartment, lifts the suspension to maximum height, and triggers a few off-road adjacent drive train features IIRC
Well, that’s what the manual says, but this Cybertruck’s battery pack was about as pressurized as a submarine with screen doors, so your mileage will DEFINITELY vary
Raises suspension to max height.
Basically just blows hard all over
