There’s no getting around it. That’s one seriously big windshield wiper.
Tesla’s (TSLA) -) Cybertruck has been coming down the road since 2019, going back to that fateful day when CEO Elon Musk watched lead designer Franz von Holzhausen smashed two of the vehicle’s “armor glass” windows onstage with a metal ball.
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The Cybertruck kept on trucking from that little mishap, but it ran into a series of production delays that kept pushing back its debut. Musk cited supply chain shortages affecting the sourcing of components.
"As with all new products, it will follow an S curve, so production starts out slow and then accelerates. So the Cybertruck is no different," Musk told investors in April after Tesla’s first-quarter earnings report.
Strong demand
Musk added that “this is really a very radical product. It's not made in the way that other cars are made."
Along the way, the Cybertruck went on to capture the hearts and minds of a whole bunch of people.
The electric pickup is so popular that reservations have surged well above one million, as recorded by crowd service data, though the real number remains unknown.
The Cybertruck entered production recently at the company's Gigafactory in Texas and will start to become available over the next few months.
Musk shared a photo of himself behind the wheel of a Cybertruck production candidate at the Gigafactory and Tesla is looking to produce roughly 250,000 Cybertrucks annually, depending on demand.
And now drone footage from Brad Sloan dated Aug. 26 shows the electric pickup truck’s massive windshield wiper at work and, uh, wow, that sucker is big.
About the only thing missing is a Louisville Slugger logo and an umpire shouting “batter up!”
Note this is a single wiper, not two like conventional vehicles, and it appears to sit on the side of the windshield when not in use, instead of going under the hood.
The wiper looks even bigger than in previous versions of the vehicle, Electrek observed, which could be due to complaints from people who saw the image featured above where it looks like it couldn’t clean the passenger side of the windshield.
Social media reaction
Musk has previously said that this wiper design would not make it to production, Electrek said, but the beta prototypes that have been spotted in the wild did feature the wiper in question.
Reaction on social media ran the gamut from support to sarcasm.
“I have lived in rough areas and that is a potential toy sword for drunk people depending on where you live so in my opinion looks great and is practical to a natural environment but not practical to human environments,” MarcusTheMartian noted on X, which used to be Twitter and belongs to Musk.
“I think it is brilliant as it reduces the wind effect on the vehicle,” Isabel Caleres da Fonseca wrote.
“It’s great and can be detached for use as a pole-vault,” according to OnlyBarks.
In other Cybertruck news, one of the vehicles has been seen rolling down the highway in a wrap meant to mimic the 2022-onward Toyota (TM) -) Tundra in dark green, The Drive reported. The video was posted to Cybertruck Owners Club.
This follows a similar wrap job of Cybertruck that was made to look like Ford’s (F) -)-150.
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