When Elon Musk shared a livestream video on Sunday of the Cybertruck, his team implied, not so subtly, that a delivery announcement of the new pickup could be soon.
The Tesla narrator began the video by saying “we wanted to see how these trucks handled one of the most challenging routes in the world.” The video took place at the end of a 1,280 mile off-road trip from San Diego to the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula.
Tesla was doing off-road durability testing of two “Release Candidate” Cybertrucks.
Notably, the narrator seemed to be laying the groundwork for an imminent release and/or announcement about availability of the Cybertruck to consumers. In fact, it almost sounded like a speech that Musk could make at a vehicle delivery event.
“Really excited to get everyone else to experience this product as we have,” the Tesla person said.
The narrator went on to say:
“These two trucks are straight out of the factory. Off the factory floor.”
“I want to give a shout out to the whole team. Everybody from the studio team who made this iconic design possible to the engineering team who took great pride in the details and especially the factory team that has made this a reality.”
The team had spent a lot of time during the trip tuning the firmware and testing the hardware and “taking it to the extreme,” the narrator said.
The terrain “has been unbelievably varied,” the narrator said. He described Baja desert, sandy wash, mountains, rock ridges, forests with giant cactus, and a red salt flat with red salt ponds.
“The only issues we’ve had are two flat tires,” he said.
The transition from highway to off-road was impressive, according to the narrator.
“You can [be] super comfortable driving on road then turn on the trailhead and suddenly switch to off-road mode. We’ve got air suspension and active dampers. So we can totally change the ride and handling characteristics of the vehicle,” he said.
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