Tesla Cybertruck Gets New Wheel Covers And Tires To Replace Tire-Chewing Ones But It Looks Better Without Them

Remember back in February when it was discovered that the Cybertruck’s custom wheel covers were chewing up the sidewalls of the Cybertruck’s custom tires? Sure you do, we all do, mostly because it was a very telling example of how an awful lot of the decisions that went into the Cybertruck seemed to be dictated by what looked cool as opposed to what, you know, didn’t destroy your own tires.

As a result, Cybertrucks have been being shipped without any sort of wheel cover and just rocking the quite decent-looking 14-spoked wheels. The bare wheels must be causing some amount of range hit, though, and now Tesla has revealed new wheel covers and tires for the Cybertruck, and they’re a really terrific example of how a letdown looks when rendered in plastic and rubber.

The new wheel covers and tires (still with Cybertruck-specific sidewall designs) can be seen on some pictures from Tesla and various social media accounts, and the response to the new wheels and wheel covers isn’t all that great. It could be because the original design, with its attempt to very tightly integrate the wheel cover and tire design, was so bold and ambitious, or it could be because the new design of the wheel cover already looks like the kind of cheap plastic wheel covers from Pep Boys that you see propped against a yield sign on a traffic island after it flew off the right rear of someone’s Altima.

Here, you can judge for yourself:

BREAKING: Tesla has launched two new options for the Foundation Series Cybertruck.

• Tactical Grey Interior
• New 20" Core wheel design and aero cover.

The tire with the Core wheel features a different tread compound and tread design that provides improved range (up to 340… pic.twitter.com/pKgya8R8hL

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) May 7, 2024

Here’s a bigger image of the new tire and wheel cover:

They just look…cheap? Boring? And boring is quite an achievement for the Cybertruck, because say what you will about it, it’s not boring. Then there’s the fact that on the tires that were custom-designed for this car, there are 18 little distinct shield-shaped embossed designs, nine wide ones and nine narrow ones. The wheel cover has seven spokes, so good luck aligning those in a way that feels visually right.

Tesla’s website still shows the Cybertruck with its original very integrated but tire-destructive wheel cover-and-tire combination:

The old wheels were seven-spoked as well, but the tire matched those seven spokes in its design, too. If we look closely at the old tire/wheel cover (top) and the new tire/wheel cover (bottom) we can see other differences:

Look how the new tire has that nonagon-shape around the middle of the sidewall, which, again, clashes with the seven-spoked cover design. It’s like the tire people were told to make something that works with nine points and the wheel cover people were told to make something with seven points. I don’t get it – how could they not make these two things work together better? Did the missing two spokes get laid off recently?

It’s worth noting that the wheels look pretty good without any wheel cover at all. David took this picture of the Cybertruck cover-less wheel when he was testing one out recently:

The wheel itself has seven main spokes that bifurcate into a pair of smaller spokes at each end, for a total of 14 spokes. That still works great with a tire that has a seven-spoked design as well. These look fine! But, they must reduce range at least some significant amount (which could be as little as a mile or less) without the aerodynamic plastic wheel cover, because why else would they bother to make a new one?

But, they did make a new one, and, like so many things about the Cybertruck rollout, it can’t quite live up to the hype. There’s no $40,000 Cybertruck coming, it’s not bulletproof, the stainless steel finish can get rusty and takes more maintenance than most guessed, there’s been a recall for a silly but important detail already, and while none of these things is a show-stopper, it also doesn’t really seem surprising now that the fix for the bold but flawed wheel setup looks like something your high school friend ordered from JC Whitney to stick on his Chevy S10.

Oh well. Another Tesla triumph!

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