The Mint 400 is not for the weak. Held in the rural desert hills and mountains south of Las Vegas, it’s America’s biggest and most challenging off-road race. In addition to open, high-speed desert sections, competitors have to negotiate rocky terrain with sharp, skidplate-piercing stones, and dust that can drive visibility to zero. The landscape subjects competitors to hours of slams, hits, and jostling, pushing them to the edge of sanity, just for a chance at victory.
When I say “the weak,” I don’t just mean people. The Mint 400 is hell on the machines, too. In the Unlimited classes last year, only 26 of the 65 competitors actually finished the race, a finish rate of just 40%. Even the most prepared competitors can have their race ruined by an errant rock in the middle of the course.
Any rational person would, then, strive to race on a proven platform to have any hope of finishing. There are dozens of different race classes to choose from, from open-class, full-on trophy trucks you’d see flying through the Baja 1000, to near-stock side-by-sides, to tiny, sub-200cc motorcycles.
A platform that’s never raced in the Mint 400? The Tesla Cybertruck. While the ultra-viral, stainless-steel refrigerator on wheels has been out for a few years now, no one has been brave enough to turn a Cybertruck into a legit race-ready desert racer. That is, until Arizona-based custom car builder Chewy Barrientos came along.
The Great Experiment
Chewy’s decision to run a Cybertruck in the Mint 400 came on the heels of another project. Founder of his shop Kilowatt Customs, he had been working on customizing EVs for about three years when a friend connected him to a man named AJ from The Original Baja Shop, a facility in Riverside, California that builds all sorts of desert-ready one-off machines. AJ was attempting to build a Baja-themed Tesla Model 3 desert runner, but couldn’t get all of the electronics to play nicely.
“I see the car, I see his problems,” Chewy told me over the phone. “I fix it all real quick in like two hours, everything’s working.”
That car, which would end up being called the Baja E, generated a lot of buzz in the off-road and EV customization communities. Here’s a video of it at SEMA last year:
“We [went] to the Sand Sport Super Show, and it got a lot, a lot of attention, and a lot of traction. We ended up going to SEMA with our car. And again, it just kept getting a lot of traction.”
Chewy and AJ stayed in contact and decided to join forces again for a second build in January. But this time, it would be more than just a show car that could rip up the dunes—it would be an actual racing machine. Amazingly, when AJ pitched the idea, Chewy didn’t even know the Mint 400 existed.
“He’s like, ‘Why don’t we take the Cybertruck and enter it into the Mint 400?'” he told me. “Full transparency, I’m kind of new to the scene. So when he said the Mint 400, I didn’t even know what it was.”
Nonetheless, they saw it as an opportunity to get more eyes on their respective businesses and skill sets.
“That’s where we got the idea,” Chewy told me. “Let’s do something new. Let’s do something that hasn’t been done. Let’s make Teslas appeal to others, introduce a new market to this industry because, as of right now, there are no Tesla drivers doing off-road races, at least not to this level.”
What Does a Cybertruck Built For the Mint 400 Look Like?
From pictures of the truck alone, you really wouldn’t know this machine has been heavily modified to compete in the Mint 400. Aside from a wrap, some lighting, new bumpers, and some different wheels and tires, it really just looks like a normal Cybertruck. All of the body panels are still there, as are all of the stock lighting and fenders.
The biggest difference, visually, happens on the inside, where a full roll cage has been installed by AJ of the Original Baja Shop. For older cars, this isn’t such a big deal. Just rip the interior out, and weld in a cage, job done. New cars are a lot more complex, since most use a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus to connect all of their electronics together into one centralized computer system. Change anything, and it drives the car haywire. But Chewy was prepared.
“These cars are basically like a computer on wheels, it’s like an iPad,” he told me. “You remove one thing, you remove a door trim, or a window sensor, or the window switch … you remove anything, and the computer starts throwing codes, and it puts you into limp mode.
“But I’ve been working on Teslas for a long time,” he added. “I’ve been building a lot of these off-road cars. I know these cars very well. I know how to bypass certain things, how to work over the limitations that the car gives you. It really was a little bit of a challenge to get it all to work.”
The result is an interior that appears mostly stripped, with all the necessary gear (bucket seats, nets, harnesses, etc.) needed to pass the Mint 400’s technical inspection. But it still has the massive central infotainment screen and the infamous steering yoke (something that feels far more appropriate in a race truck than in a street truck).
All of the other changes can be found in the chassis and suspension. Amazingly, Chewy and AJ decided to retain the factory air suspension for the race, albeit with a bunch of heavy-duty, billet aluminum upgrades to make sure it doesn’t blow out at the first set of rocks.
“We’re actually running the stock Tesla air suspension, but we just did a lot of upgrades to the suspension components like the A-arms and some of the joints, some of the bushings,” Chewy said. “The dudes from Unplugged [Performance] hooked us up with their two-and-a-half-inch lift kit, and that’s actually what we’re running to give us the clearance and to make it more rugged than it already is.”
Unplugged Performance, one of Chewy’s sponsors for the race, is arguably the biggest name in the Tesla modification scene, known for selling suspension, aero, and braking upgrades to make Teslas function as performance vehicles. Since the Cybertruck’s debut, the company has also branched out into offering off-road gear for Tesla’s utility machine. In addition to the suspension changes, Chewy’s Cybertruck is running beadlock wheels, steel bumpers, and skidplates from Unplugged Performance.
It’s All About The Prep
The biggest question surrounding this build isn’t whether the Cybertruck can survive the challenging conditions; it’s whether it’ll have enough range to make it to the finish. Depending on the class you’re racing in, you have to complete anywhere from one to six laps of the Mint 400’s 95-mile course. The EV Open Production class, where the Cybertruck is racing, requires two laps to finish. The longest-range Cybertruck is rated at 335 miles of range according to the EPA, but factor in the driving conditions and all the extra weight from the safety gear, and range plummets dramatically.
“So, right now, at 100% charge, the truck’s range that it gives me on the screen is about 280 miles,” Chewy said. “[That’s] just based on a lot of off-roading that I’ve done and some of the testing that we’ve done within the last few weeks. We’re estimating that we’re going to get about half of that. So, best case scenario, we’ll get 140 miles of range.”
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Of course, 95 multiplied by two laps is 190 miles, which is more than the truck’s estimated range. Luckily for Chewy, Mint 400 organizers let EV competitors skirt away from the course after every lap to get a juice-up—something first done by Rivian back in the 2024 running of the race, when it competed using a modified R1T.
“One lap is 95 miles, then they actually let us stop our time, go to the charger down the street, Supercharge it, and then come right back and continue the race,” Chewy told me. “Rivian was one of the first EVs that entered this race. So they set the precedent of how it all works. When Rivian did it, that’s exactly what they did. They finished up the first lap, they went to the Supercharger down the street, or the Electrify America charger, and then they came back and continued the race to do their second lap.”
The obvious follow-up is, what happens if the Cybertruck runs out of juice while it’s on the course? Chewy and his team have planned for that, too.
Throughout the race, the truck will be shadowed by a chase vehicle—also a Cybertruck—driven by Jerry Perez. The great Emme Hall, who is competing in the Mint 400 and also writes for The Autopian, was the person who alerted me to this Cybertruck’s existence and to Chewy’s participation in the race. Shout out to Emme!
Despite being in the midst of an incredibly busy race-prep week, Hall found the time to speak with Perez on the team’s strategy yesterday. He revealed that the chase truck is towing a generator that can operate as a 50-kW DC fast charger, in case the race truck needs a juice-up anywhere beyond the standard charging stop.
Perez described the generator to Hall as a “last resort,” in case the truck uses way more juice than the team predicted. He suspects that it’ll still come in handy if Chewy and co-driver AJ are on the side of the course fixing parts. “[The generator] could charge them for 10, 15 minutes—that’s still significant,” he told Hall.
The chase truck is carrying a bunch of extra parts, too, in case something breaks.
“We have a ton of things,” says Chewy. “Just off the top of my head, we have a full set of front and rear air shocks, we have a full set of knuckles for the front and the back. We have extra tie rods. We have extra suspension bolts. We have two extra tires, and we have even more in our pit trucks—extra lug nuts, extra bead locks.”
As for other driving prep, Chewy told me the car has been out of limp mode for the past week, and it’s done a total of 20 to 30 miles of off-roading to make sure everything functions as it should.
“I’m a little bit of an off-road guy, I go to [the] Glamis [dunes in California], that’s actually where I take the truck a lot. When I drove it out there, stock, it handled okay. But now with all the upgrades, oh man, it handles 70 to 80% better. It feels so, so good.”
Here’s a video of the truck doing some of the aforementioned off-road testing:
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Hilariously, the truck hasn’t lost any of its original self-driving functionality, despite all of the modifications.
The car has full self-driving,” Chewy said. “It drove us here, it drove us to the race, it drove us through the parade. It’s basically a fully functional Tesla, but with a very, very beefy roll cage and some upgraded suspension.”
The EV Open Production class is set to run today, with the team’s entire venture being livestreamed on the Butter_EV YouTube channel. People love to hate on the Cybertruck, so I suspect some folks might not have high expectations for this endeavor. But after speaking with Chewy, it seems he has a lot of the bases covered, especially with his co-driver, AJ, being a hardcore off-road racing veteran. The only competitor in their class is a factory-backed Silverado EV, which also raced last year. If the Cybertruck can finish and beat that truck, Tesla haters might have a bit less to say going forward.
Top graphic image: Chewy Barrientos
Props to them for going for it, I’ll never root against a racer, but that ball joint spacer is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Basic hand calcs and first principles will tell you that that’s a terrible idea. No shit it didn’t last the race.
I think we can all appreciate doing things the hard way, and these guys are certainly in that category. Good luck y’all!
It would be more interesting if EV’s can’t charge during the race. They might come up with a creative solution.
Yeah, basically they’re allowed to cheat.
How is that fair?
Can a gas car carry a half tank then just pause the clock while they fill up? Or maybe pause while they change tires, or oil, between laps?
is this person referring to the stock cybertruck suspension as rugged
Update from the live stream: They’ve dropped into limp mode at least once, maybe twice. They also broke a control arm so they’re trying to limp to the Gonzo pit.
The stream is having all sorts of connection problems so information is patchy.
As a surprise to everyone, they broke the 2.5″ long bolt that’s attached to the ball joint.
This is just like the Turntide Sierra EV that entered in to the King of the Hammers Desert Challenge last month which DNFd due to steering components breaking.
These teams, who know nothing about off road racing, jump head first into big races and waste tons of time and money because they don’t take time to practice or test. They focus so much on the drivetrain and battery capacity that they ignore everything else.
Billet control arms but can’t fabricate a taller knuckle.
I commend their effort in trying to bring EVs into a decidedly not EV space but they are not doing any favors to the image of EVs by half assing it and not consulting anyone with half a clue about off road racing.
Thanks for the update! Exactly what I commented would happen, but I’m at work and didn’t really want to check in on the stream to see how quickly it happened.
It happened very quickly.
It almost looks like a joke part. I wonder if the box said “Not for off-road use.”
I was a bit disappointed when I read the article, because despite my dislike for the CT it’s always fun to see people try something new in motorsport.
But seeing how little they did to the suspension (and how poorly executed it seemed) was a let-down. I’d wager they would have been better off just swapping the upper control arms and leaving the lift off completely, but it would have been cool to see them go all out and add a bespoke desert racing suspension that could have actually held up.
They’ll have an unfair advantage because the other competitors will be driving one-handed while flipping them off.
Seems like a rollcage install would be easy since they can just unbolt the battery and drop out the whole cabin floor.
“just unbolt the battery”
The Tesla service manuals are available online. Reading anything that involves the HV battery is 😮 Like, have someone standing by with a big hook so they can drag your crisping carcass away.
It’s OK, there may be a lot of electrons in there but at 800V they’re not angry, just a bit grumpy.
It’s not the volts, it’s the amps that get you. Trust me, you don’t want to grab each pole of a 110V household line.
Every kid has jammed a nail or other metal in there, it’s amazing what we can survive.
As long as you only jam the nail into one of the socket holes and you are standing/sitting on non-conductive surface, you just get that weird muscle spasmy shock. Stand barefoot on wet grass and do that, and it’s been nice knowing you, unless the breaker trips real quick. Also, don’t hold a nail in each hand and stick each nail into the live and neutral holes, respectively.
Link to the live stream is 404. Here’s the current stream – just started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFx2qAwNAqk
It’s a really interesting engineering exercise. I wish the racers luck. Not a Cybertruck fan overall but it does have some good stuff hidden underneath and I always enjoy learning about that.
But that lift kit, eeek.
I can’t imagine that lift post on the knuckle lasting a race.
…and it didn’t.
I still hate these, but good for them for trying.
Am I looking at this wrong or is the lift kit just a spacer on the top of the air suspension and that extension on the control arm? Looks like the kind of cheap ‘lift kit’ you get off Amazon for $250 for an old Pathfinder.
You are not looking at it wrong, and your concerns were well-founded. Apparently it already broke at the poorly thought out knuckle extension.
I’m also thinking DNF. But what do I know?
Ah yes. Nothing says we’re trying to preserve range like WRAPPING YOUR DESERT RACE TRUCK BLACK. I’m sure that won’t chew through electrons trying to keep the cabin hospitable.
Also, since Chebby is running a truck as well, do they get any bonuses for finishing on a single charge? Or does the CT get to take a comfy charge break and come back like it never left?
Cause that starts to feel like a Jake Paul style fight card really quick.
What? Sounds like an admission that an EV sucks for racing. Does NASCAR “stop the clock” for refueling and new tires? No, I’ll answer myself. No, it doesn’t.
Or, how how about slow the fuck down so you can make it two laps? Make that part of the strategy.
My most controversial automotive take is that I actually like the Cybertruck, purely as a weird footnote in automotive history. I wish more people did cool stuff like this with them.
I’m coming around to that viewpoint, slowly. In a sea of grayscale crossovers, it’s good to have something weird.
I drove one around while my car was in service, and was really impressed by how well it drove. The steer-by-wire was quite cool, so hopefully that shows up in more cars.
Honestly, when I see a Cybertruck—especially approaching from a distance— I think it is just another gray crossover. In a world of giant grey vehicles with light bars it’s hard to pick out without seeing it in profile.
It’s not for me but I am fairly indifferent to them overall. Certainly its shortcomings don’t give me the same schadenfreude that others seem to get. Except for Trevor Wallace videos, those are pretty funny.
Our local Costco has, I think, like a 48 hour test drive for one and I’m tempted to just do it for giggles. It isn’t the kind of vehicle I would ever spend my own money on, but I wouldn’t mind one for a day or two.
I think once they get past the round of original owners, the opinions will start to change.
I think so. You’re definitely going to start seeing more nuanced takes.
This is how I feel as well. I don’t particularly want one. But after everyone screaming “all cars are boring now, won’t somebody make something interesting?” for years, it was nice to see something come out that really isn’t like anything else on the road. It’s fun to see them out there.
I think there’s plenty of interesting stuff on the road. Hyundai et al designs all stand out, the 11th gen Accord looks like it’s from 10 years in the future, Rivians look different AND good, there are more boxy SUVs to combat the generic round CUVs, the Hummer is back to signal everything a hummer driver is, and I feel like I see more modified cars in both tasteful and untasteful guises.
I’ll give you that the Cybertruck still stands out as wholely unique looking but I wouldn’t miss it. Maybe that’s just me not overcoming my biases.
No I agree with you, there’s lots of interesting designs being pushed by automakers these days if you look hard enough. And I think that even mundane cars can be quite interesting when examined closely. But I still think it’s refreshing to see a company completely throw out almost every convention and make something extra unique.
Despite a lot of terribly executed ideas, there was some proper engineering in the truck. I think the 48v architecture is fascinating.
I think that letting EV’s take a break to charge is fair. But towing a generator? And take a rock to the undercarriage (aka, battery) and things are going to get spicy.
It’s the best looking Cybertruck I’ve ever seen! But that’s not a particularly high bar to exceed.
I’m interested in your thoughts to justify this.
How is it fair?
In a race, range, even on a gas car, is a key part of the strategy and therefore the race.
This seems like cheating to me.
My first thought was that the flimsy upper control arms didn’t stand a chance, but then you showed they swapped those out with custom billet units.
Which might have helped had they also not added an extension on what looks like the stock steering knuckle as part of the lift. I will not be shocked at all if they break the knuckle on the first big impact. I’m curious to see what the lower control arms look like.
Yeah, the lift looks sketch.
Hey now, I’m sure it’ll last just as long as any Rough Country lift that actually sees anything other than asphalt!
I saw that extended ball joint and had a big WTF moment myself. I am not optimistic for them, but I’m assuming I must be missing something in the design. They don’t seem like drooling simpletons.
Update: You were not. See Keith Tanner’s comment above.
Go figure! Super sketch.
I’m sure a yoke would work great off-road, everyone knows off road driving requires little, if any, steering input. /s
The Cybertruck is steer by wire. The steering wheel can’t physically turn more than like a third of a turn or so
Did they test it on any rougher terrain, I’ve gone faster on worse roads in my CRX
Yeah, that’s not much different than a rail trail.
Oh, geez, why is my comment awaiting approval? Is it because of the use of the word “N*zi”?
Yeah, they’re careful with some words, I don’t blame them. I got hit with a Sc*nthorpe Problem the other day for using a spelling variation of “snicker.”
I don’t see any updates to the brakes. I know for on road performance, stock Tesla brakes wouldn’t hold up, wondering how much that matters out in the wild just trying to finish vs chasing tenths of a second on a race track.
“If the Cybertruck can finish and beat that truck, Tesla haters might have a bit less to say going forward.”
Eh, no, some if not indeed most of the hate has nothing to do with performance but with why the Cybertruck is frequently called the SSybertruck or the CybertrucKKK. That vehicle exists solely and precisely because of one fash Nazi apartheid boy; otherwise it wouldn’t exist but if it did (most doubtful) it would incur nowhere near as much hate.
And much of the hate based on looks would likely dissipate over time like what happened with the Pontiac Aztek (and even the Nissan Murano CrossCab.)
The hate based on engineering & mechanicals (such as the entrapping electric door handles and the finger-amputating frunk lid) would likely remain strong, though, lol.
“Let’s make Tesla’s appeal to others” – let’s see if that works.
And they let EV’s pause the race to recharge??
If they would let me pause the race for frequent restroom breaks then I could drive also.
The pause should be of the head of their organization from Twitter (X): that would improve their appeal to others.
Still just a swasticar
Any bets something major breaks before the halfway point?
I see a future DNF here.
Damn, I should have put my money where my mouth was on my lift kit breaking comment.
“it drove us through the parade”
I’m sure it did. RIP parade attendees.