BEST EV ADVENTURE TRUCKS CYBERTRUCK & R1T

Tesla has finally unlocked the Cybertruck’s off-road potential. We grab a rival and head to the desert for a baptism of fire...

WORDS JACK RIX & OLLIE MARRIAGE

PHOTOGRAPHY GREG PAJO

A NAKED CAR N A NAKED PLACE.

Hours from LA and light years from its celebrity culture the Cybertruck sits in a desert, as if sent from the future by Skynet. If it had zapped into existence on bolts of electricity, that would be no less believable than it driving here. It is not of this world. It’s a bewildering, alien machine.

So let’s bring it crashing down to earth. Both metaphorically and literally at 60mph from about a metre above the deck. Then we’ll bounce it back up again through some whoops, scramble over rocks to the sky, plunge through sand dunes and a whole lot more. Put it through earth’s off-road wringer, in other words.

Because TopGear is the first in the world to drive a Cybertruck with all its off-road modes and camping tricks activated. We’ve got fully operational diff locks to go with a foot of height adjustable air suspension, we’ve got Baja mode, plus a light bar, Cybertent and Cybercooler. We’ve also got more than one Cybertruck. An 845bhp tri-motor (with light bar) is here for the drag racing, drifting and camping, while a 600bhp dual motor does the rest. Both have the full off-road suite; the dual motor has mechanical locking diffs at both ends, while the tri-motor has a virtual rear diff – no physical connection, but individual torque vectoring and trick software to mimic it.

We’ve also brought along a little competition. You don’t need us to tell you the Cybertruck is a lifestyle adventure pickup rather than a workhorse, so rather than Ford’s F-150 Lightning or the GMC Hummer EV, here we have the R1T, a pickup from another west coast startup, Rivian. Complete with Yakima roof tent and front end styling closer to Baymax than the Terminator. It’s an 835bhp quad motor and costs $87,000 before options. The dual motor Tesla costs from $79,990, while the tri-motor Cyberbeast is $20k more.

We’re in Johnson Valley OHV (Off-Highway Vehicle) area. A 96,000 acre off-road paradise that Brits can barely comprehend. Let’s get stuck in.

DRAG RACING

We’re not exactly famous for our scientific precision here at TopGear, which is why we begin with the world’s most ramshackle off-road drag race. We say off-road, but the cracked dirt is baked hard and crusty as we survey the vast and shimmering Soggy Dry Lake. This should be close: both Tesla and Rivian are carrying ballast in the form of tents bolted to their backs (they didn’t need it – they weigh 3.1 and 3.2 tonnes unladen respectively) and there’s a mere 10bhp differential in favour of the Tesla, although the Rivian scores pub points for having one motor more. On paper it’s the Cybertruck’s to lose given its 0–60mph time of 2.6secs vs 3.0secs, however the Rivian wears optional off-road tyres that should claw into the dirt more effectively, whereas the Tesla wears standard fit, less aggressively treaded all-terrain rubber.