Elon Musk: Tesla Cybertruck can sail

“The Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to act as a boat for a short time, allowing it to cross rivers, lakes and even seas that aren’t too choppy,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter. We don’t know how a vehicle can function as a boat ‘for a short time’ and still be able to traverse a sea, but perhaps Musk is referring to bays and other offshoots. Moments later, the objective is specified: “He must be able to get from Starbase to South Padre Island by crossing the channel,” says the high-profile Tesla boss.

To understand how that works, we have to zoom in a bit. South Padre Island is the southernmost stretch of a strip of land that lies like a natural barrier off the coast of south Texas. There is also a village with this name. Just south of this island, which is accessible by bridge, is Starbase, a launch site and rocket factory of Musk’s space company SpaceX.

Getting from Starbase to the pleasantly habitable South Padre Island requires a significant detour. There is a harbor with a large channel in the road, so that it takes 45 minutes to reach a place by road that is about 10 kilometers away as the crow flies. Whether Musk is aiming for a traffic jam of floating Cybertrucks in the morning and evening rush hour for this place, we do not know. It is of course interesting that the Tesla Cybertruck has something of amphibious qualities. We are waiting!

The Tesla Cybertruck was already presented in 2019, before competitors came up with electric pick-ups. The car stands out with its downright bizarre body and, of course, completely in Tesla style, it also has bizarre specifications and ‘party tricks’. In the meantime, however, we have been waiting for the production start for a long time, although we sometimes got to see a more production-ready version of the Cybertruck via shady roads. As it stands, production will start in the summer of 2023.