A photograph of a big and conspicuously triangle-shaped vehicle in Munich, near BMW’s Research and Innovation Center, has surfaced on the web, suggesting the German automaker is doing a teardown of the newly-released Tesla Cybertruck.
Now that the Cybertruck is out, sightings aren’t all that unusual, especially in California and Texas where a lot of the vehicles are being delivered.
But one place that Cybertrucks still aren’t common is Europe, where it isn’t sold (and it’s unlikely that the vehicle will ever be sold as a consequence of its size and the likelihood that its high and boxy front-end wouldn’t pass pedestrian safety regulations).
So imagine the surprise when a flatbed automotive transporter was spotted with a covered(-but-really-you-can-tell-what’s-under-there), triangle-shaped vehicle in Munich, just down the road from BMW.
The photos were posted by Nextmove, a German EV rental company that also has an lively youtube channel posting details about EVs. Here’s an embed of the video, deep-linked to the portion in query (photos start at 27:36):
The photos were sent in by a viewer who says they were taken on April 4 at around 7:45am on the corner of Schleichheimerstrasse and Frankfurter Ring, coming from the direction of BMW’s Research and Innovation Center. The location is indeed only one block away from several BMW facilities, as you possibly can see on this map of the realm:
Now perhaps that is all only a crazy coincidence, but it surely seems quite likely that BMW bought this truck, probably for teardown purposes. Which is interesting, on condition that BMW doesn’t make trucks (though it does make SUVs).
But despite their lack of pickup trucks, BMW might be still fascinated about seeing among the recent technologies that Tesla is working with within the Cybertruck. Despite the vehicle being a… let’s say “statement,” it’s filled with amount of tech that the automotive industry has been talking about for a protracted time, but which heretofore has been seen in few or no finished vehicles.
This includes things like 48-Volt architecture and steer-by-wire, and another technologies which can be on some vehicles but still reasonably recent, like Tesla’s larger 4680 cell format and Powershare bidirectional charging. Tesla also originally promised to make use of a novel “exoskeleton”-style chassis, though because the truck got closer to production that appears prefer it didn’t quite pan out the best way we imagined – but we’re sure BMW is fascinated about seeing what’s underneath that skin anyway.
This isn’t the primary time we’ve seen Cybertrucks within the possession of other automakers, and it’s common for automakers to acquire recent vehicles from other automakers in order that they can take them apart and see what the competition is as much as.
Last month, a Cybertruck was spotted outside Ford’s proving grounds in Detroit, and reportedly the automaker paid quite a fairly penny for it. Early Cybertrucks sold for almost 1 / 4 million dollars on the secondary market, despite Tesla’s threat to sell early buyers who flip their trucks. So far, Tesla hasn’t followed through on this threat with a lawsuit, but it surely has blacklisted at the very least one owner after he listed his for sale, and as more trucks have gotten out, the resale market has cooled from its initial extreme highs.
But then, even that quarter million number might be low in comparison with what BMW may need paid. In February, a Cybertruck was listed on the secondhand market in Germany for a cool €485k, so either a wealthy enthusiast wantsa triangle to brighten their garage, or a wealthy German automaker desired to be the primary to ascertain it out. We hope they learned lots for that form of money.
Credit : electrek.co