After stopping shipment of Cybertruck’s original aerodynamic wheel covers due to unusual tire wear in early February, Tesla is finally starting to install redesigned wheel covers on Cybertrucks that were delivered without them in the interim, and we’re finally seeing pictures of what they’ll look like.
All the way back to its original unveiling, the Cybertruck has been shown with some pretty cool wheel covers that fit the design of the vehicle.
Much has been said about the Cybertruck’s, uh, “unconventional” design, and it is certainly polarizing. Some love it, some hate it (me). But the design philosophy in the car is quite consistent – Tesla maintained an extremely angular design throughout the entire vehicle, inside and out.
Its aerodynamic wheel covers are one aspect of that design, with a cool 7-spoked look that matches up with the vehicle’s custom tires. (Aerodynamic wheel covers are very beneficial for vehicles, increasing efficiency significantly at very low cost)
But, just before production, Tesla had a problem. One of the wheel covers flew off in traffic, which could cause a dangerous situation – sending following cars swerving or otherwise creating road debris that could be kicked up and cause damage to vehicles or people.
Then, not long after the vehicle started shipping, people started noticing unusual wear on the Cybertruck’s tires. The 7 “spokes” on the wheel cover were rubbing against the tire sidewall, and causing wear much faster than expected. The problem was that tires would bulge out while rotating, rubbing against the rubber spoke on the wheel cover, and this caused a small amount of wear every rotation.
It’s possible that this resulted from a late redesign. Perhaps, after Tesla had the problem with the cover flying off, the cover was redesigned to sit closer to the wheel, which then caused wear which wasn’t noticed in testing before release. At least, that’s how we speculate it happened.
The unusual wear problem caused Tesla to stop shipping wheel covers, and recommend that all drivers remove theirs until further notice. Some owners claimed that Tesla communicated that new caps would be available in March, but that time came and went.
We did see one new wheel cover design just three weeks after Tesla pulled the original covers, but people weren’t particularly happy with the look. In order to fix the problem of the spokes rubbing against the tires, Tesla just deleted the extending parts of the spokes completely. While this probably would have looked fine if it was the original design, it definitely doesn’t have the unique/cool aspect of the extending-spoke design we’ve seen.
So those caps never got delivered. But now one Cybertruck owner has reported that Tesla contacted them to have new covers installed, and posted a photo online of the new design – which looks a lot like the old one.
The photos were posted by gmembersonly on Reddit, and you can see them here:
Without looking side by side, they look almost identical. But if you compare to a photo of the old wheel covers, there are some minor differences.
The new design has a more sunken area in the center, which doesn’t bulge out quite as far as the original design does. But most notably, the “spokes” are just shorter in the redesigned cover than the original one.
This makes sense, because that’s what was causing the problem. While the new design looks a little bit like it “doesn’t fit” because the spokes are nowhere near as long as the indentations on the tire, it still shows the intent of the design language between the tire and the wheel cover. So it maintains the general idea of the original design, but hopefully without the fatal flaw.
As for how to get your hands on the new wheel covers, gmembersonly says that they were “randomly contacted from Tesla” after which they went in to get them installed right away. They originally took delivery in March, not too long after Tesla stopped delivering covers.
So, Cybertruck owners might be hearing soon about install of these new covers. And hopefully the nearly six months that Tesla spent redesigning them means there won’t be as many problems as there have been in the last few iterations.
Regardless, if I owned a Cybertruck (which, per previous discussion about my opinion of its design, I wouldn’t), I’d make sure to keep the tires inflated to recommended tire pressures, to prevent bowing out and potential rubbing of the tires against the covers, at least until enough miles have been put on these parts to see if there might still be any problems.
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