The best way to view a vehicle is on the road. You get to see it from every angle, moving, in its natural environment on the pavement. With as many images of Tesla’s Cybertruck as there are flying around the internet, these drone shots give you the best sense of how this polarizing design really looks. You can even sense the scale of the Cybertruck with the other Tesla cars zipping around the track.  

This footage comes via Chile Al100, and not only shows the Cybertruck in action but gives an overview of some of the Tesla factory in Fremont, California. It’s a busy place. And this is only the outside of the plant. 

This Cybertruck prototype has mirrors, a wiper, and more

It looks a bit more like an actual production model with side-view mirrors and a crazy, large windshield wiper. It is eliciting enough buzz that Tesla founder (and Time magazine’s Person of the Year) is even tweeting his displeasure about it. “The wiper is what troubles me most,” he says. “No easy solution. Deployable wiper that stows in the front trunk would be ideal, but complex.” According to Electrek, Tesla is working on what it calls an “electromagnetic” wiper for the Cybertruck. 

Musk is also not happy with the side-view mirrors but offers a solution. “Owners are allowed to modify their cars.” Yes, this is true, but only what is allowed by law. Removing your mirrors is illegal. 

But going to side-view cameras is not. However, they’re slowly being accepted in the US. The last time we heard, they’re still being tested by the IIHS. Working in conjunction with backup and rear-view cameras, it says they work well in most cases, whatever that means.

The front is softer and it has different headlights, too

Some other changes we notice include a rounder front end, and headlights below the lightbar. The softened front styling is probably because of pedestrian crash standards. As for the headlights, we can only speculate that either lighting standards, or having an alternative location to be legal in other countries is the reason for the addition. Either way, it doesn’t affect the design negatively. 

We also see what looks to be louvers or vents in the hood. They could be strictly an embellishment to break up the surface, or they could be functional in some way. And they could also be something other than vents, or imperfections in the hood’s surface. Sometimes they show up and other times they don’t.

At the Cybertruck’s unveiling in November 2019, Musk said it would be in production in 2021. Obviously, that hasn’t happened. Now Tesla says it will see production by the end of next year. So with a year before it starts manufacturing the truck, we expect to see more prototypes out and about.