Jager
Well-known member
- First Name
- Jeff
- Joined
- May 25, 2020
- Threads
- 25
- Messages
- 339
- Reaction score
- 1,091
- Location
- Virginia
- Vehicles
- 2024 Cybertruck AWD, 2022 Model 3 LR AWD
- Thread starter
- #1
Meandering like a drunken sailor, the road unwinds in a series of mini adventures. Tracking across Virginia’s rolling landscape, hard up against its western Piedmont, the ancient topography here is exactly what you’d expect in the foothills of the Blue Ridge.
Off to my right, the darkened visage of those mountains beckon. I’ve driven up into that shadowed labyrinth for a lifetime. Carrying a rifle, or a fly rod, or wielding two wheels.
Today I’m in the truck. Winding across a circuitous route that I’ve ridden a million times.
Uncoiling in hard spirals that will hurt you, this road has been one of my favorites for as long as I can remember. Technical, demanding, every foot is either climbing, falling, turning left, or turning right. Crests and apexes come at you like punches from a boxer in a never-ending stream of you-best-get-this-right.
It’s a motorcycle road, plain and simple. Cages, here, suck.
Only… not today. Not anymore.
The Cybertruck doesn’t hide its size. There’s no escaping its weight and length and girth. And so it’s something of a surreal experience when you touch the throttle and feel all that mammoth size simply vanish. There’s a delicacy, an almost preternatural feel to its steering. The one-pedal driving gives an uncanny sense of control. And the suspension bestows an uncommon confidence as it has you railing around corners at the very limit of the tires' adhesion.
As I go hurtling down the short little chute where the famous actor’s ranch driveway enters, the blind left-hander just beyond has my attention. The turn rises, hard, even as it turns, imparting a twisting movement to any vehicle at speed. If you don’t get it right you’ll be into the stone fence fifteen feet off the tarmac.
But hit your line just exactly so and you can catch a couple degrees of nearly hidden camber. Just enough. Enough to give you a couple more mph of corner speed out of those I’m-giving-you-everything-I’ve-got tires.
You touch the steering yoke, your head pulls hard to the center of the cabin so you can see around the big A-pillar, and then you feel the lift. Smooth, spun, pushing you back into the seat like the grace of angels.
You smile and shake your head at the deliciousness of it all, ever amazed at the wonder of this gift. A word floats into your consciousness, one that only comes rarely.
Exquisite.
It’s been a year. 12,401 miles.
On day four, at 359 miles, the rear drive unit failed. It sat at the Service Center for a week while they diagnosed it and waited for parts.
Since then… perfect.
Actually, better than perfect. Because the miracle of the Cybertruck is that beyond its unnatural prowess on a back road… is its utility. It’s a truck, after all.
Like all the ICE trucks that came before it, mine lives outside. No garage. No carport. No nothing. It sits out there in the heat and the cold and the sun and the rain.
I live at the end of a quarter-mile dirt/gravel driveway. It sees a half mile of “off road” on every drive.
The truck stays dirty. Dust is ever present in the vault.
It’s had one flat tire.
It’s powered my home twice.
It saved the bacon of two car drivers, stuck in the snow. The bag I routinely carry in the frunk with all the serious recovery gear – kinetic rope, hitch receivers, hitch pins, soft shackles, tow strap – didn’t actually get used on either of those. All it took was the two recovery boards that live in the bed.
It’s been on 15-odd mini road trips, each of a few hundred miles. Mostly carrying me to rifle matches hither and yon.
Towing isn’t its bailiwick. But pulling a utility trailer somewhere reasonably local is. It’s done that a few times.
It’s carried the million and one things that pickup trucks get called upon to, out in the sticks.
The Tesla spare tire rides in the front of the bed. Except on those occasions when more space is needed, on which occasion it gets wrestled out.
The spare tire weighs a ton.
Probably the most useful accessory on the whole truck is the Tesla Bed Divider, which allows working from the rear for most things. The two Recovery Boards live zip-tied to the divider.
The undervault storage - smugglers bay - is mostly about self reliance. Mobile Charger and 25’ extension cord. Everything needed to deal with a flat – plug kit, compressor, breaker bar, 21mm deep socket, torque wrench, spare valve stems, hand cleaner, a few hand tools.
Plan A is always to plug the tire with it on the truck. Plan B is to plug the tire off the truck. Plan C is swap in the spare.
In the cabin, the IceCo fridge in the back and the ham radio transceiver in the front both need 12v DC. So there’s a 12v DC power supply sitting up under the front passenger seat. Anderson Powerpole connections make everything easy peasy.
Efficiency has been excellent. I occasionally dip below the EPA bogey on a high speed road trip. But mostly it stays well above it.
Lifetime consumption is 370.2 Wh/mi.
Battery pack degradation has yet to enter the picture.
Much has changed in the EV and Tesla world these last twelve months. Politics, off the rails, now seems to inform everything.
Alas.
What hasn’t changed, though, is what the engineers at Tesla wrought. They threw away the rule book and built something brilliant and different.
Something… exquisite.
Off to my right, the darkened visage of those mountains beckon. I’ve driven up into that shadowed labyrinth for a lifetime. Carrying a rifle, or a fly rod, or wielding two wheels.
Today I’m in the truck. Winding across a circuitous route that I’ve ridden a million times.
Uncoiling in hard spirals that will hurt you, this road has been one of my favorites for as long as I can remember. Technical, demanding, every foot is either climbing, falling, turning left, or turning right. Crests and apexes come at you like punches from a boxer in a never-ending stream of you-best-get-this-right.
It’s a motorcycle road, plain and simple. Cages, here, suck.
Only… not today. Not anymore.
The Cybertruck doesn’t hide its size. There’s no escaping its weight and length and girth. And so it’s something of a surreal experience when you touch the throttle and feel all that mammoth size simply vanish. There’s a delicacy, an almost preternatural feel to its steering. The one-pedal driving gives an uncanny sense of control. And the suspension bestows an uncommon confidence as it has you railing around corners at the very limit of the tires' adhesion.
As I go hurtling down the short little chute where the famous actor’s ranch driveway enters, the blind left-hander just beyond has my attention. The turn rises, hard, even as it turns, imparting a twisting movement to any vehicle at speed. If you don’t get it right you’ll be into the stone fence fifteen feet off the tarmac.
But hit your line just exactly so and you can catch a couple degrees of nearly hidden camber. Just enough. Enough to give you a couple more mph of corner speed out of those I’m-giving-you-everything-I’ve-got tires.
You touch the steering yoke, your head pulls hard to the center of the cabin so you can see around the big A-pillar, and then you feel the lift. Smooth, spun, pushing you back into the seat like the grace of angels.
You smile and shake your head at the deliciousness of it all, ever amazed at the wonder of this gift. A word floats into your consciousness, one that only comes rarely.
Exquisite.
It’s been a year. 12,401 miles.
On day four, at 359 miles, the rear drive unit failed. It sat at the Service Center for a week while they diagnosed it and waited for parts.
Since then… perfect.
Actually, better than perfect. Because the miracle of the Cybertruck is that beyond its unnatural prowess on a back road… is its utility. It’s a truck, after all.
Like all the ICE trucks that came before it, mine lives outside. No garage. No carport. No nothing. It sits out there in the heat and the cold and the sun and the rain.
I live at the end of a quarter-mile dirt/gravel driveway. It sees a half mile of “off road” on every drive.
The truck stays dirty. Dust is ever present in the vault.
It’s had one flat tire.
It’s powered my home twice.
It saved the bacon of two car drivers, stuck in the snow. The bag I routinely carry in the frunk with all the serious recovery gear – kinetic rope, hitch receivers, hitch pins, soft shackles, tow strap – didn’t actually get used on either of those. All it took was the two recovery boards that live in the bed.
It’s been on 15-odd mini road trips, each of a few hundred miles. Mostly carrying me to rifle matches hither and yon.
Towing isn’t its bailiwick. But pulling a utility trailer somewhere reasonably local is. It’s done that a few times.
It’s carried the million and one things that pickup trucks get called upon to, out in the sticks.
The Tesla spare tire rides in the front of the bed. Except on those occasions when more space is needed, on which occasion it gets wrestled out.
The spare tire weighs a ton.
Probably the most useful accessory on the whole truck is the Tesla Bed Divider, which allows working from the rear for most things. The two Recovery Boards live zip-tied to the divider.
The undervault storage - smugglers bay - is mostly about self reliance. Mobile Charger and 25’ extension cord. Everything needed to deal with a flat – plug kit, compressor, breaker bar, 21mm deep socket, torque wrench, spare valve stems, hand cleaner, a few hand tools.
Plan A is always to plug the tire with it on the truck. Plan B is to plug the tire off the truck. Plan C is swap in the spare.
In the cabin, the IceCo fridge in the back and the ham radio transceiver in the front both need 12v DC. So there’s a 12v DC power supply sitting up under the front passenger seat. Anderson Powerpole connections make everything easy peasy.
Efficiency has been excellent. I occasionally dip below the EPA bogey on a high speed road trip. But mostly it stays well above it.
Lifetime consumption is 370.2 Wh/mi.
Battery pack degradation has yet to enter the picture.
Much has changed in the EV and Tesla world these last twelve months. Politics, off the rails, now seems to inform everything.
Alas.
What hasn’t changed, though, is what the engineers at Tesla wrought. They threw away the rule book and built something brilliant and different.
Something… exquisite.
Where it Lives - Outside the Shed
Spare Tire, Recovery Boards, Foam Mat for Working on the Ground
Smugglers Bay
Grid Power Down - No Problem!
Towing One of the Bikes
12v DC Power Supply & VHF/UHF Radio
Fridge
Battery Capacity after One Year
Rated Range
Efficiency vs Ambient Temperature
Sponsored
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style reminds me of a few favorite authors/books of decades ago, BRAVO! 
