The Tesla Cybertruck has only been terrorizing America’s roads for a little over six months, but someone has already managed to get their massive electric pickup truck totalled. A plucky engineer bought the wrecked monstrosity and is attempting to bring it back to life, but it doesn’t sound like a fun task at all.
A Ford Edge totalled the truck in question earlier this year, reports Autoevolution. Insurers wrote the Cybertruck off, after which it was sold on to YouTuber and budding wrencher Kyle Wade, who runs the BoostedBoiz channel.
In his latest video, which is available to watch for yourself below, Wade outlines all the issues he’s run into while attempting to save the ruined truck, a mission he describes as a “bad idea.”
The truck he started out with had two caved-in doors on the passenger side, as well as damage to the driver side after it hit a pole as well as rear tracking issues that were caused when the Cybertruck was pushed into the curb. There were also all kinds of bodywork and trim pieces missing.
To try and repair the truck, Wade and his team took a methodical approach that began with replacing some key fuses that he says usually blow when Tesla cars are involved in crashes. Next, they identified an issue with the 48v battery and replaced that. Miraculously, this got the truck to start up once again – but there was an issue, as Wade explains:
We did get the Cybertruck moving once again, but it was in a limp mode that only allowed it to go 4 mph. It had a big red warning on the screen that said ‘critical steering issue detected’.”
The solution, they thought, was to recalibrate all the sensors on the Cybertruck to try and reset the red warning that was flashing up on the center screen. They also attempted to recalibrate the truck’s steer-by-wire system, which they thought could have been impacted by the crash.
To do this, the team needed to rent Tesla’s Toolbox software for a day. For $165, this gave them greater access to the truck’s controls and allowed them to dive deeper into the operation of the front and rear steering, as well as the response from the steering wheel.
Plugging the toolbox into the Cybertruck did appear to help them make progress on the rebuild, as it uncovered 25 issues with the steer-by-wire system onboard that they think can be remedied by calibrating the steering and all the associated sensors. But while this appeared to work on the rear wheels, it failed on the front wheels and the steering wheel itself. Not good.
Things were just as bad when they attempted to power up the truck, and the screen flashed red and told the team to pull over safely. Clearly, not much progress is being made on the totaled truck.
After endless hours of work on the Cybertruck, this progress comes to a halt. Wade describes the totaled truck as a “big old stainless paperweight” by the end of the video, as it still doesn’t drive, doesn’t steer and sill has two doors missing.
But he isn’t giving up, and explained that his next step will be to put the doors on, plug everything back in and then try the process all over again. Wade also explained that the issues they’re facing could be down to the steering control module, which he say is the next target for the team’s repairs.
The complexities of the repair just go to show how much cars have changed with the switch to electric vehicles. We’re used to seeing builds where people revive ruined internal combustion engine cars, with another YouTube currently working to revive a ruined Rolls Royce. However, could the pivot to EVs bring an end to this genre of car builds without proper backing from automakers?