2026 Tesla Cybertruck review: 18 months and 12,000 miles in the most polarizing EV

Cybertruck at a glance: 18 months in

My truck is the premium all-wheel drive: dual motor, 20 inch cyber wheels with covers, and an early VIN. The verdict up front: you cannot really argue with the fundamentals of the truck. I think it is probably the best featured electric car, and if they made a longer range version, there would be no arguing with that. When I filmed this in April, the new cheaper trim was sold out through the end of the year, and the market context matters: Ford has canceled the F-150 Lightning and RAM dropped its electric pickup, so this truck sticking around is good for the electric pickup market.

Update, July 2026: the lineup now runs Standard AWD at $69,990, Premium AWD at $79,990, and Cyberbeast at $99,990. The standard launched at $59,990 for a real 10-day window in February before rising $10,000, and deliveries of those window-priced trucks began in June.

The bed nobody realizes it has

It still very much is a truck. People do not realize that because the very strong tonneau cover is usually fully closed. Underneath is a full 6 foot bed with a powered tonneau and tailgate, plus a deep sub-bed storage compartment with dividers. The bed carries an L-track system, dimmable in-bed lighting, integrated hooks, and real power: 2 normal 120V outlets and a 240V for bigger things. You can even charge another EV from that.

The geometry has a trade-off. It is 6 feet at the floor, then the walls slope inward about 6 to 8 inches, so 6 feet of cargo will not fit at the top with the tailgate closed. The upside: taller cargo like a chair rides under the closed tonneau with the high part in the wider bottom section. The downside: loading the taller areas from the side is a little harder.

Stainless steel reality: sharp corners, zero rock chips

It is unpainted stainless steel, the only way it comes, and not quite the exoskeleton Tesla originally envisioned. The corners are legitimately sharp. The tailgate corner is pretty rough and changes the way you get out of the bed. There is a corner at head height at the back; I have hit my head there before, and it is not fun. The thin panel edges could do damage if you swiped along them with force, and 1 misaligned piece on my truck sticks out and is extremely sharp. The frunk closes 1 sharp corner against another; Tesla has apparently improved the sensor, but it is still not something you want to risk fingers on. Anytime you are engaging with this truck, you are aware of the corners, down to ducking on the way in.

The payoff: after 18 months I do not have a single rock chip on this car, and no chips in the glass either, because it is also Tesla armored glass.

Exterior quirks worth knowing

The 20 inch cyber wheels wear covers that get a little misaligned at times, and the valve stem hides entirely behind the cover, so filling a tire means removing the whole thing. The charge port is standard Tesla, back left, and does Superchargers and home charging like every other car they make. The frunk is larger than people expect and then smaller than people expect; mine has a bench insert so you can tailgate from the front, and it is powered up and down. Add the triangular side mirrors, cameras all over, and the largest windshield wiper you have ever seen in your life.

People either love or hate the look. By far the worst angle is the rear, and that is the angle most people are actually seeing. And when you do a double take at a dumpster because you thought it was a Cybertruck, you know the critics are kind of right. I actually did that.

Inside: yoke, 17 inch screen, and a 4 foot dash

The yoke actually makes sense in the Cybertruck, because steer-by-wire means you are never turning hand over hand. The screen is a massive 17 inch display, the largest Tesla has shipped in any consumer vehicle, incredibly responsive, something like 120 Hz, and the software totally matches: the best vehicle software out there. The console lifts up to a wide bin with 2 cup holders and 2 wireless phone chargers, with a full pass-through below. The windshield is the largest to ever ship on a vehicle, the visors swing sideways for an even more panoramic view, and the dash runs something like 4 feet to the glass; I keep a special cleaning tool just to reach it.

There are no stalks: blinker buttons, which I do not mind too much in practice, plus a headlight button, media and FSD scroll wheels, and camera, wiper, and voice buttons. If the stalk-less cabin bugs you, the S3XY knob and buttons from the video description add physical controls back. My real disagreement is the horn: Tesla went with a train horn sound, and I have had people not even recognize that I am honking.

Visibility: panoramic forward, blind backward

When the tonneau cover is closed, you literally cannot see out of the back, and the tiny rearview mirror becomes useless. The mitigation is the rear camera feed on screen, movable and resizable, kind of bigger than a rearview mirror would be. They really should have made the rearview mirror a display; it would have been a lot better. Forward, you cannot see the front of the truck and the A-pillars are large, so you lean on the sensors and visualizations. I also want a bed camera: nothing actually looks into the bed, which is a feature on many other trucks.

While we are on the tonneau: I wish it was fully waterproof. It is almost waterproof. I have driven in a torrential downpour and the stuff inside did not get too wet, but it was getting a little bit wet. Third-party seals make it better; it is still not 100 percent.

Build quality, recalls, and owner oddities

The Cybertruck has had its fair share of recalls; some were software fixes, and the bed railing was one I did have to take to service. My early-VIN list: a piece broke off the truck and the replacement already seems to be coming loose, service left some trim loose after cleaning the FSD camera (probably service's fault), there is a pretty significant rattle I played on camera, and my frunk got sticky: it opens about an inch, holds for 20 seconds, then finally releases. Loose trim should not be present on a car at this price.

Then the oddities only an owner learns. The steel accumulates a ton of fingerprints anywhere you touch it. I get shocked by the Cybertruck all of the time, to the point that I have a routine of touching the exterior before getting out so I am grounded. And leaves get stuck under the panels, particularly in the back; a bunch of mine are never coming out.

Second row and cargo

The second row of a car is often not that exciting, but the Cybertruck's is actually very functional. Even the middle seat is a lot wider than most, and I have driven with 3 adults in the back without much complaining. The rear screen plays music, streams media, runs the arcade, and streams to Bluetooth headphones. The middle seat folds down as an armrest with cup holders, and there are 2 USB-C ports plus a normal 120V outlet. One quirk: almost everyone without fail opens the window with their elbow, so I almost always have window lock on. My favorite feature might be the simplest: the rear seats fold up flat and the rear doors open at almost 90 degrees, so loading cargo inside is very easy.

Driving it: steer-by-wire and 4-wheel steering

One-pedal driving, no stalks: I press the brake and it automatically guesses which direction I want; if it guesses wrong, you swipe on screen. Steer-by-wire adjusts and adapts based on how quickly you are driving, and full lock is a small movement of the yoke. It has 4-wheel steering, with the rear wheels turning too, which makes the turning radius pretty incredible. I drove the Rivian R1T for quite a while before this, and that truck is a decent amount smaller, but this is just easier to drive. It is easier to drive from a steering perspective than something like a Model Y; I give this less steering input to go the same distance. Most trucks are not easily knocking out a U-turn across 2 lanes. In this: super, super easy.

Size context: coming from a Model 3, it is definitely way bigger than you might be expecting. Coming from another truck like an F-150, it will be a familiar size and will actually feel a lot smaller.

Range, comfort, and road trips

We do wish Tesla had made a 500 mile range version. For now it tops out a little over 300 miles, and that seems to be the sweet spot a lot of people need day to day. It is fully compatible with Tesla's Supercharger network, so road trips are never too bad; the pain cases are all-day drives and towing, where range will probably be cut something like in half. The premium's air suspension moves between high, medium, low, and entry, and the ride quality in this car is really great. The dynamics menu adds relaxed or focused ride and handling, and standard or chill acceleration, with beast if you have the Cyberbeast. Mine is the normal premium all-wheel drive with 2 motors, and still it is plenty quick.

Comfort: ventilated and heated seats, though the ventilation could be stronger. I am a musician, and I absolutely love the sound system of the Cybertruck; it is, I think, my favorite I have ever heard in a car. It has become the favorite road trip car of a lot of people I know: Las Vegas, up and down California, out to Arizona.

FSD on the Cybertruck, and the noise cancellation update

Tesla's Full Self-Driving mode has gotten incredibly good, except the Cybertruck is kind of a little bit behind. It has all of the same features with the exception of Summon and Smart Summon. On my Arizona trip, running FSD version 14.2.2.5, it kept dodging things on the road that were nonexistent: tire marks, lines on the road. Phantom braking used to be an issue; this was more like phantom dodging, and I kept having to take over. Still, this system is a massive improvement compared to where it started.

Active road noise reduction arrived by software update: quiet zones in the headrests, optimized for front occupants, on hardware that has been there this whole time. My A/B test result on my own truck: I do not really notice it.

Update, July 2026: FSD is subscription-only now at $99 per month, since Tesla ended outright purchases in February 2026, and since March the referral benefit on a Cybertruck order is 3 months of free FSD. Summon had not reached the truck as of my April drive, so check the current release notes before you count on it.

Standard vs. Premium AWD: what the $10,000 buys

Tesla launched a standard all-wheel drive Cybertruck at $60,000, and it has since gone up to $70,000, but that is still around $10,000 less than the one I have. What you give up: air suspension (coil springs with adaptive damping instead, and since I almost never adjust my ride height, you probably will not miss it), towing drops from 11,000 to 7,500 pounds and payload from 2,500 to 2,006, the sound system falls from 15 speakers to 7 and loses the active noise cancellation, ventilated front seats and heated rears are gone, the 9.4 inch rear screen is gone, vegan leather becomes a tactical gray textile (for a truck, fabric might actually be more practical), the ambient light strip and in-cabin power outlets go away (bed outlets and PowerShare remain), there is no sub-trunk and no L-tracks (a real work-truck difference), the wheels drop to 18 inches, and the rear light bar disappears, one of the most distinctive parts of the look.

What stays is the point: the same 325 miles of range, the same 4.1 second 0 to 60, and the same steer-by-wire and 4-wheel steering. The bones of the truck are identical. On the speaker cut, Cybertruck lead engineer Wes Morrill pushed back publicly, saying speaker count is not the best metric and that the base truck's audio is on par with the Model 3 and Y and above most non-Tesla vehicles he has benchmarked.

My verdict: that $10,000 you save is mostly comfort and polish, and the only downgrade that would genuinely change my daily experience is the sound system. For $10,000 less, I think it is a good option, and if it ever comes in $15,000 or $20,000 less than the premium trim, it will be a no-brainer for most people.

Update, July 2026: the gap is exactly $10,000 today, $69,990 versus $79,990, and the Cyberbeast got a $15,000 cut to $99,990 in February. There is no rear-wheel drive trim right now; an EPA filing pointing to a 335 mile RWD is a single-sourced leak, not an announcement. Leases start at $949 per month with $5,000 down if you want to live with one first.

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2026 Tesla Cybertruck Review | The Most Underrated EV27 MIN · WATCH ON YOUTUBE