Traditionally, things are supposed to stay attached to cars as they drive down the road. It’s a bit of a safety thing. It would be bad if something were to fly off your car, soar into the air, and come down straight into traffic. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to the wheel cover on a pre-production Tesla Cybertruck driving down a highway in California.
The dashcam video, posted on YouTube, starts off normal enough. On the right side of the video, you can see a Cybertruck — sticking out like a sore thumb —driving down the road. Then, while going around a gentle curve at the 0:11-second mark, we can see one of the Cybertruck’s goofy wheel covers fly off the left side of the electric truck.
From there, it rockets into the Californian sky above, which I guess means it has some aerodynamic properties to it. It stays airborne for a couple of seconds before landing in front of a VW Jetta in the left lane. The white sedan then runs it over, but the little “ninja death star,” as The Verge describes it, starts rolling once again in front of our hero car with the dashcam.
The driver is seen swerving out of the way, but it’s unclear whether or not it was hit. The whole time this is happening, the Cybertruck driver does not seem aware that they’ve just lost a part of their truck, which doesn’t seem ideal.
In a lot of ways, it’s a throwback to when you’d see wheel covers and hubcaps come flying off cars while going around turns before rims pretty much became standard on all cars. So, if you think about it, Tesla is both looking to the future and to the past. I know this is just a pre-production truck, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if we end up seeing Cybertrucks with zip ties holding the wheel covers on.
