Last month, we alerted you that the Tesla Cybertruck had made its way to Michigan. It was on display at an SAE International competitive event at the Michigan International Speedway. More recently, the updated Cybertruck joined Tesla Semi prototypes at the speedway for another related event.
The SAE event in May 2022 was specifically an “engineering education competition” geared at college students and graduates. There were reportedly 99 teams participating in the event, which required a $2,550 registration fee. According to SAE via Teslarati:
“The Formula SAE competitions challenge teams of university undergraduate and graduate students to conceive, design, fabricate, develop and compete with small, formula-style vehicles.”
The Tesla Cybertruck was previously available for viewing at the speedway from May 18 through May 21, 2022. People speculated that this was a way for Tesla to potentially attract future engineering talent for its growing workforce.
Fast-forward to the present, and Tesla has updated its Instagram page with video clips featuring not only the updated Cybertruck, but also some Tesla Semi prototypes. Tesla included the following information along with the Instagram stories:
“20 of Tesla’s sponsored student electric vehicle teams compete in the Formula SAE races this week. Tesla provided teams with battery cells or discounts, mentorship, and design reviews — opening the doors for more teams than ever to compete in the EV division.”
There are several short clips from the event on Instagram, but we can’t attach them here. Instead, we have the most relevant clip that was shared on Twitter by Tesla Owners Silicon Valley. There’s also similar footage in the YouTube video at the bottom of the page.
As pointed out by Teslarati, the Cybertruck’s massive windshield wiper blade was missing at the event. However, just a month ago, at the previous SAE event, the Cybertruck was equipped with the wiper. See below:
Tesla continues to make changes to the wiper blade, and CEO Elon Musk has made it clear that it’s a difficult design situation.
The Cybertruck’s windshield is massive, so the need for a huge wiper is obvious. However, at the same time, it shouldn’t look ridiculous. As you can see from the tweets above, there has been speculation about different options, including lasers. However, cost and complexity are clearly a concern.
Perhaps Tesla will connect with the competition participants to gather up more ideas about a potential solution for the Cybertruck’s wiper blade situation. At any rate, check out Tesla’s Instagram page, as well as the videos in this article. Then, leave us your thoughts in the comment section below.
In the video below, you can see the recent footage of the Cybertruck without the wiper blade while the older image to the right of the video shows the version with the blade attached.
Originally published at https://insideevs.com/news/593279/tesla-updated-cybertruck-electric-semi-michigan/
