- A hip-hop musician tried to fake Tesla remotely disabling his vehicle.
- He claims Tesla bricked his Cybertruck while he was driving on the highway, leaving him stranded.
- He showed the car displaying a fake screen that it had been remotely disabled and also produced a fake cease and desist letter.
There are plenty of things not to like about the Tesla Cybertruck, starting with the fact that it’s not as revolutionary as we were all hoping it would be. It’s been the butt of constant jokes ever since it came out, but while initially most people were picking on it for its appearance, now they’re deliberately misrepresenting it just to make Tesla look bad.
No matter how thick the Cybertruck’s skin is, the level of hate it’s been garnering on social media lately might be too much for it. It’s not doing very well, with sales falling sharply this year, and there are several reasons that have come together to see its popularity plummet. It’s true that there have been some quality issues with the Cybertruck, including a few recalls and design flaws (the worst of which being the poorly designed accelerator pedal), but the problems have mostly been ironed out, and most owners have a pretty good experience.
One of the worst instances of malicious Cybertruck content that surfaced on social media is this video by a user claiming that Tesla remotely disabled his vehicle, leaving him stranded on the highway. Whatever the driver’s motives for trying to throw shade on Tesla are, claiming that the vehicle bricked itself like that is just wrong. Tesla could (and probably may) take him to court over it.
The video was posted in a subreddit called r/CyberStuck, which only allows photos and videos of Cybertrucks that are stuck. In the original Instagram video, Detroit-based rapper Big Huey claimed Tesla had stopped his truck and reposted it to the thread with the caption “Let’s go ahead and deactivate here, looks like a good spot.”
Big Huey also showed a cease and desist letter from Tesla—apparently also fake—which, among other things, stated that the vehicle had been “remotely disabled” because he supposedly used it in a music video without the manufacturer’s approval. It also addresses him as "Mr. Huey," which isn't his real name.
None of the people who commented on Reddit seem to be any the wiser that it would be highly unlikely for any manufacturer to remotely disable one of their vehicles, leaving someone stuck in the middle of the road. Some of the comments on his Instagram posts do call it out as being fake, though. No manufacturer would ever do this because of the possible very serious legal implications of such an action.
Tesla hardly ever responds to user-generated content, but this time it retweeted an explanation that this was definitely a fake scenario and that the creator of the video was just trying to get attention by making Tesla look bad. If something like this had happened in China, where automakers are far more likely to take people to court over things they say about a brand and its cars, the video creator would have ended up in jail, paying the company significant damages.
Some people in the comments on Reddit pointed to this as being another instance of Cybertrucks not working after an over-the-air software update. But while that is an older issue that Tesla may or may not have entirely fixed, the video that caused all this is provably fake. The screen says, “Tesla Cybertruck De-Activated. Critical Issue Detected. Comply With Cease And Desist To Re-Activate.”
Now, not only are there a couple of hyphens in there that should be a dead giveaway that it’s fake, but the whole screen itself doesn’t look like something Tesla would make. So while Cybertrucks have some problems, and some have even been bricked, it’s not that common, and Tesla is working to solve all these issues. There is a lot of hateful, negative content out there that spiked after Elon Musk entered politics, and it doesn’t appear to have cooled now that he’s no longer part of the government.
