YouTuber Marques Brownlee, perhaps better known for his moniker MKBHD, has popped up a lot in the car review space lately, especially given his rather impactful comments on the beleaguered Fisker Ocean. Brownlee is back, and this time he's got his hands on the 2024 Tesla Cybertruck Foundation Series.
His review of the truck is pretty balanced, but there's one thing that Brownlee calls out as being fairly bad: the panel gap. Or, at least one panel gap problem with the truck's front door. It turns out that the Cybertruck that Brownlee is driving has a driver's door that looks like it's popped open when it's actually fully closed.
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Tesla's embarrassing quality issues persist
If there's one thing Tesla is known for by its owners, it's the notorious "panel gap" problem. Tesla has a reputation online for not checking its cars for quality problems from the factory, even leading to owners creating checklists for customers to perform before accepting delivery of their cars. They've gotten better over the years, but the issue persists with the new Cybertruck.
"The thing about a low-VIN Tesla is you will be dealing with low-VIN production quality stuff," Brownlee explains just four minutes into his review. He later continued: "This panel gap is actually worth mentioning. It's the worst panel gap that I've ever seen on a production vehicle."
Brownlee points out the driver's door, after closing it with a rather unsatisfying rattle rather than a solid door-closing thunk, has a gap that looks wide enough to shove a finger in.
"I think there's gonna be something wrong with this door because it literally looks like it's open," Brownlee said. "That's pretty bad. I've never seen a gap quite that bad."
Pro-Tesla users on Tesla CEO Elon Musk's social media platform, X, shared Brownlee's issue. One called it "embarrassing" while another noted that it was the "worst gap they've seen on any door period."
All of the attention was enough to summon Musk himself to respond to the problem.
"About 15 Cybertrucks in service had an issue where the door striker loosened in the field, due to insufficient torque after door fit," Musk wrote. "This [takes] 5 mins to fix in service and has been addressed in production."
That being said, Brownlee isn't the only Cybertruck driver to run into panel gap issues. One post on the Cybertruck Owners Club forum showed body-related issues with some gaps being as large as 3/16"—a lot larger than the "sub-10 micron accuracy" expected by many owners.
Panel gap and glaring quality issues may have been acceptable for Tesla as a new automaker more than a decade ago, but it's embarrassing at this point in Tesla's saga—especially with a six-figure flagship truck.
It's refreshing to see reviewers and pro-Tesla influencers calling out Tesla for these quality problems that need to be addressed. If Tesla wants to remain competitive as more EVs flood the market, quality is something that it absolutely needs to address, even if that means taking a hit on the number of units going out the door per day.
