Tesla Cybertruck wheel cover flies off in traffic as production looms
Tesla’s Cybertruck is just about ready to enter production, but a test vehicle was caught on video causing a potentially dangerous situation as its aerodynamic wheel cover came off in traffic, striking another vehicle and flying into the sky.
Ever since it was originally unveiled, the Cybertruck has had some pretty cool-looking aerodynamic wheel covers. While we’ve seen the wheels without the covers on lately – as Tesla’s “production candidate” vehicles have been spotted in testing – as far as we can tell, the aero wheel covers are still planned for production.
The most efficient vehicles are the ones that slip through the air, causing the least disturbance. Wheels work against that because they are like large side-mounted turbines that actively disturb the air as they roll along.
Aerodynamic wheel covers are an important benefit because they can increase efficiency by 5-10%. This is particularly good for an electric vehicle because more efficiency means you need less battery onboard, making the car less costly and less heavy. Another reason you see these less frequently on gas vehicles is because brakes need lots of airflow to stay cool. By contrast, with EVs, brakes don’t get as hot since EVs can use regenerative braking instead of physical friction braking.
So, these wheel covers make a lot of sense, especially on a car that’s already shaped kind of like a brick.
However, as seen on Tesla’s previous cars, the aero wheel caps on the Cybertruck seem to be removable. We’ve just seen an unplanned example of this in a highway dashcam video in which the wheel cover flies up into the air, nearly hitting another vehicle, and then later being run over by multiple vehicles:
The video was taken by another Tesla owner through the dashcam function, which uses the car’s Autopilot cameras (and a driver-provided SD card) to constantly save footage around the vehicle. It happened in San Francisco, on the 101 freeway, relatively close to Tesla’s Fremont factory location and an area where Teslas are very popular. The Cybertruck in question didn’t have the “Release Candidate” badging that we’ve seen recently.
The wheel cover is just a plastic piece that is latched onto the spokes of the underlying wheel. It’s relatively lightweight, so it’s unlikely to cause significant damage to other cars. But an object flying off on the highway is still not ideal. It can damage other cars, cause drivers to react unpredictably, or worse, harm pedestrians if it happens in an area near them.
Currently, Tesla vehicles drive hundreds of millions of miles per day, and we have not heard of any significant incidence of aero wheel covers falling off like this. Tesla has several wheel designs, and additionally, there are many third-party aerodynamic wheel covers available with unique designs, and we haven’t noticed this being a problem with any of them.
However, the Cybertruck’s wheel covers differ from these in that they seem to project out from the wheel slightly:
The gap that allows air in probably helps to keep the brakes cool, as some air needs to get in to cool them off when they do get used, and the cover is otherwise completely sealed off, unlike the Model 3, which has open spoke areas.
We don’t know for certain what caused this failure. It could be that the wheel cover caught a little bit of air, combined with a loose connection – either because the attachment point isn’t designed right or because of human error if the cap is difficult to attach, which is still a design issue.
But the fact that it’s happening so close to production – and with limited mileage on Cybertrucks – suggests that if there is indeed a flaw in the design, this might happen more often as more Cybertrucks get more miles on the road. Whatever the problem is, we hope Tesla fixes it quickly, as production seems to be only weeks or months away.
Electrek’s Take
Alright, at the end of the day, this is just one piece falling off of one car, something that happens every day to all kinds of vehicles. It’s not that exceptional.
But the story here is that the Cybertruck isn’t out yet and hasn’t driven a lot of miles, yet this issue has already happened once on video. This suggests that if whatever flaw caused this remains (a loose connection between the cover and wheel, a difficult attachment process leading to human error in attaching the cap, or what have you), we might see a lot more of this as the vehicle comes out – which is happening soon. We hope that Tesla’s engineers get their heads wrapped around whatever caused this failure and can fix it posthaste.
But also, I always like an excuse to talk about aerodynamic wheel covers and their benefits.
For some reason, people seem to think the Model 3 looks better without the caps on. I disagree wholeheartedly and think that a large percentage of that opinion’s popularity is due to familiarity – people are used to wheels with spokes, so they prefer looking at wheels with spokes.
Not only do I think the caps look cool, but realistically, if we added aerodynamic wheel covers to every vehicle on the road, we could cut total US energy use by something like 1% overall, which is a pretty enormous cut for such a simple change.
The new Tesla Model 3 Highland refresh includes two new wheel designs that are a nice compromise between aerodynamic performance and a traditional, spoked look, but I still like the even more covered look of the Model 3 base 18″ aero wheels and of the Cybertruck wheels as well. Not only do they look sleek, but they also perform better aerodynamically – assuming this problem gets examined and, if necessary, fixed.
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In a joint statement, French and German economists have called on governments to adopt “a common approach” to decarbonize European trucking fleets – and they’re calling for a focus on fully electric trucks, not hydrogen.
France and Germany are the two largest economies in the EU, and they share similar challenges when it comes to freight decarbonization. The two countries also share a border, and the traffic between the two nations generates major cross-border flows that create common externalities between the two countries.
At the same time, the EU’s transport sector has struggled to reduce emissions at the same rate as other industries – and road freight in particular is a major contributor to harmful carbon emissions issue due to that industry’s heavy reliance on diesel-powered trucks.
And for once, it seems like rail isn’t a viable option:
While rail remains competitive mainly for heavy, homogeneous goods over long distances. Most freight in Europe is indeed transported over distances of less than 200 km and involves consignment weights of up to 30 tonnes (GCEE, 2024) In most such cases, transportation by rail instead of truck is not possible or not competitive. Moreover, taking into account the goods currently transported in intermodal transport units over distances of more than 300 km, the modal shift potential from road to rail would be only 6% in Germany and less than 2% in France.
That leaves trucks – and, while numerous government incentives currently exist to promote the parallel development of both hydrogen and battery electric vehicle infrastructures, the study is clear in picking a winner.
“Policies should focus on battery-electric trucks (BET) as these represent the most mature and market-ready technology for road freight transport,” reads the the FGCEE statement. “Hence, to ramp-up usage of BET public funding should be used to accelerate the roll-out of fast-charging networks along major corridors and in private depots.”
The appeal was signed by the co-chair of the advisory body on the German side is the chairwoman of the German Council of Economic Experts, Monika Schnitzer. Camille Landais co-chairs the French side. On the German side, the appeal was signed by four of the five experts; Nuremberg-based energy economist Veronika Grimm (who also sits on the National Hydrogen Council, which is committed to promoting H2 trucks and filling stations) did not sign.
You can read an English version of the CAE FGCEE joint statement here.
Electrek’s Take
MAN Trucks’ CEO famously said that it was “impossible” for hydrogen to compete with BEVs, and even committed to building 200 hydrogen-powered semi truck to prove out that hypothesis.
He’s not alone. MAN’s board member for research and development, Frederik Zohm, said that the company is the one saying hydrogen still has years to go. “(MAN) continues to research fuel cell technology based on battery electrics,” he said, in a statement quoted by Hydrogen Insight, before another board member added that, “we (MAN) expect that, in the future, we will be able to best serve the vast majority of our customers’ transport applications with battery-electric trucks.”
With companies like Volvo and Renault and now Mercedes racking up millions of miles on their respective battery electric semi truck fleets, it’s no longer even close. EV is the way.
SOURCE | IMAGES: CAE FGCEE; via Electrive.
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GE Vernova has produced over half the turbines needed for SunZia Wind, which will be the largest wind farm in the Western Hemisphere when it comes online in 2026.
GE Vernova has manufactured enough turbines at its Pensacola, Florida, factory to supply over 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of the turbines needed for the $5 billion, 2.4 GW SunZia Wind, a project milestone. The wind farm will be sited in Lincoln, Torrance, and San Miguel counties in New Mexico.
At a ribbon-cutting event for Pensacola’s new customer experience center, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik noted that since 2023, the company has invested around $70 million in the Pensacola factory.
The Pensacola investments are part of the announcement GE Vernova made in January that it will invest nearly $600 million in its US factories and facilities over the next two years to help meet the surging electricity demands globally. GE Vernova says it’s expecting its investments to create more than 1,500 new US jobs.
Vic Abate, CEO of GE Vernova Wind, said, “Our dedicated employees in Pensacola are working to address increasing energy demands for the US. The workhorse turbines manufactured at this world-class factory are engineered for reliability and scalability, ensuring our customers can meet growing energy demand.”
SunZia Wind and Transmission will create US history’s largest clean energy infrastructure project.
Read more: The largest clean energy project in US history closes $11B, starts full construction
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