Cybertruck Body Defects Surface
Cybertrucks have begun rolling out to more non-employee buyers, and on January 11th some photos of a Cybertruck with what looks to be some warped body panels showed up in a post on the Cybertrcuk Owners Club forums.
The new owner took delivery of the All-Wheel Drive truck earlier that same day, and immediately took a bunch of pictures. From the first round of snaps, we can see misalignments in the door and the body panels at the rear quarter of the vehicle - which is not what one wants to find on their new $100,000electrick pickup truck.
Considering the attention his post got, the Cybertruck owner took new photos the next day in daylight, using a tape measure to give some context to the separation on that rear quarter body panel.
The owner says he could not tell that it was out of alignment unless he put his face right up to it, and the tape measure showed that the panel was making a gap about 3/16” away from the truck - not great, but not as huge as it looked the night before.
Tesla’s not off the hook, though, as he reports in the same followup post that the right turn signal was having trouble activating - only working maybe 30%of the time. That’s a bigger issue, but the owner says that he expected some defects as part of owning a Cybertruck from the first commercial run, and likely won’t bother getting the company to fix the panel deviations when he goes in to get the turn signal fixed - which reportedly is already scheduled with his local Tesla Service Center.
This particular Cybertruck owner might be fine with their new truck having clear gaps in their vehicle panels, but some of the people replying to his post were disappointed that this is still happening with Tesla products.
Generally speaking, every time Tesla has put out a new vehicle, there have been problems with the fit and finish of their new car being reported by customers. Gaps in body panels, door frames, and general misalignments across Tesla’s fleet have been known issues until the company could work out all the kinks in their production lines.
And the tricky construction process of the Cybertruck means that any small defect in one of the angular, flat body panels will show up much more obviously at the corners and edges where panels end or meet.
This isn’t to say that Tesla’s quality control team shouldn’t be catching these issues before the trucks leave the line - but it is something that will likely take some time to figure out to the satisfaction of some Tesla owners.