Tesla fans in Europe are still waiting for the company’s most divisive product.
The Cybertruck has been on sale in the US for nearly two years, becoming both a status car and a target for anti-Elon Musk protests, but Tesla has shown no sign of bringing it across the Atlantic.
It’s not hard to see why.
The Cybertruck’s hulking stainless-steel frame and razor-sharp edges fall foul of a bunch of European regulations, and efforts to import the truck into Europe have sparked political backlash and led to Cybertrucks being seized by police.
Raven Seeholzer is trying to change that.
The founder of used Tesla marketplace Teslab and his team have spent the past year tearing apart a fleet of Cybertrucks in their workshop in Basel, Switzerland, and Seeholzer now believes they are tantalizingly close to making the “apocalypse-proof” pickup road-legal in the country.
“We’re in the final stage of getting it road legal here. We just wanted to bring this crazy car to European roads and show everybody that it’s safe,” he told Business Insider in an interview in October.
‘The car was pretty much fully apart’
Seeholzer has run Teslab since 2018, but his quest to bring the Cybertruck to Switzerland began last year, after he realized it would likely take Tesla years to navigate the regulatory and logistical hurdles to start building Cybertrucks in Europe.
Other attempts to bring the truck across the Atlantic have largely ended in failure. One custom-wrapped vehicle was seized by police in the UK in January after they concluded it was not road-legal in the country.
Another imported to the UK by YouTuber and luxury car dealer Yianni Charalambous quickly became embroiled in a spate of issues, with local politicians calling for the vehicle to be seized by police.
Charalambous, who had intended to modify the pickup to make it road-legal in the UK, later said he planned to leave the UK and take his Cybertruck with him.
Last year, a modified Cybertruck apparently registered in Czechia sparked criticism from campaigners and road safety advocates, who sent a letter to authorities calling for Cybertrucks to be banned from European roads.
Seeholzer told Business Insider that many of the Cybertrucks imported into Europe so far had not been properly registered and had only minor modifications. Teslab, which has a fleet of five imported Cybertrucks in its Swiss workshop, has essentially rebuilt its prototype pickups from the ground up, he said.
According to Seeholzer, the Cybertruck’s famously sharp edges — which left some early owners with cuts — were the biggest issue.
European regulations do not allow vehicles with sharp edges that could harm pedestrians, so Teslab had to cover them with rubber and build a new front bumper to improve the vehicle’s crash protection.
Teslab’s team of engineers also had to overhaul the Cybertruck’s electrical wiring to make it compatible with European regulations, a process Seeholzer said involved essentially “re-engineering” the pickup.
“The car was pretty much fully apart,” he said.
Since then, the modified Cybertruck has undergone a grueling regime of government tests in Switzerland to be registered as road-legal.
Seeholzer said the vehicle had passed most of the major hurdles to get approved, adding that it was a “matter of time” before Teslab’s first Cybertruck was registered in the country.
The rest of Europe may have to wait, however — Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, and Seeholzer admitted that getting approval in the EU would be a lengthy process.
A ‘lifestyle’ vehicle
Despite Europe’s cautious approach to the Cybertruck, the demand seems to be there. Seeholzer said that Teslab had already sold three of its five Cybertrucks and had received around 400 preorders as of October.
He added that weight regulations meant that the first few European Cybertruck owners would have to treat their trucks as a “lifestyle” vehicle and avoid traditional truck activities.
“In Switzerland, the maximum weight for a car is three and a half thousand kilograms. The [modified] Cybertruck is a bit under it, which means you cannot load too much,” he said.
Weighing in at 3.5 tons, the pickup will be a tight squeeze on European roads, which are often far narrower than in the US. Its sharp edges and 0-60mph time of 2.6 seconds have also led some experts to compare it to a guided missile on wheels.
Bruno Dvorský thinks otherwise. The cofounder of Cybertruck.cz, the company behind the Cybertruck, registered in Czechia last year, told Business Insider in October he had imported another Cybertruck into the country and planned to register it before crashing it earlier this year.
Dvorský said Cybertruck.cz had added silicone coverings to blunt the Cybertruck’s sharp edges, swapped out its red lights for yellow ones that comply with local rules, and added reversing lights.
He argued that the Cybertruck is no less dangerous than other large pickups already available in Europe, and said detractors were “bicycle riders” who lived “small” lives and were jealous of the vehicle.
“It’s okay, but don’t hate on other things,” said Dvorský.
In September, the US Army Customs Agency said that Germany had denied requests for service members to bring their Cybertrucks into the country because the vehicle “deviates significantly” from EU regulations.
The agency said the Cybertruck violated European rules banning vehicles from having sharp edges and requiring speed limiters on anything weighing over 3.5 tons.
In 2020, CEO Elon Musk said Tesla would likely eventually build a smaller version of the pickup for global markets like Europe and China. There’s been no sign that Tesla has any plans to do this, and the brand’s sales have cratered in Europe this year amid backlash against Musk.
“When anyone looks at the facts and the applicable rules, it’s clear the Cybertruck is illegal in Europe,” James Nix, a policy manager at European think-tank Transport & Environment, which was among the signatories of the letter protesting the Czech Cybertruck, told Business Insider in October.
Nix said that he expects further attempts to put Cybertrucks on European roads to be “discontinued” in the wake of Germany’s decision, adding that it would likely be impossible for anyone who imported a Cybertruck into Europe to get the necessary insurance.
Would-be European Cybertruck owners do have one unlikely ally: the Trump administration. After the US president imposed a barrage of tariffs on the EU earlier this year, the two superpowers unveiled a framework for a trade deal in August that included a commitment to standardize vehicle regulations.
In October, a group of European cities, non-profits, and safety campaigners sent a letter to European regulators urging them not to accept US standards, warning that it could lead to Cybertruck-style vehicles on European roads.
Seeholzer said he hoped Teslab’s plan to make the Cybertruck road-legal in Europe would change the perception of Tesla’s most controversial EV.
He added that previous efforts to get the Cybertruck into Europe, some of which have used unmodified imported vehicles, have done more harm than good.
“Nobody tried to really do something to change the car. They just did maybe things on the edges, maybe changed a few things on the lights, but nobody went all in,” he said.
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