Welcome back to the podcast. Welcome to a special bonus edition of the show. We ask, will Tesla's

cyber truck ever go global? The stainless steel wedge on wheels became a symbol of Elon Musk's bravado.

The man with the Midas touch unveiled his next big thing, and a million fans, they say

duly got in line with deposits. Some reports say two million.

At the time, Tesla and its showman CEO could do no wrong. They were on a role. In his own words,

if nobody bought the cyber truck, Tesla would go back to the drawing board and redesign it to be

conventional. But could a redesign keep the looks while making it meet the road regs outside of

the USA? Well, fast forward to now, North American sales have dried up and regulatory barriers block

global expansion in its current form. The cyber truck faces an existential question. Will it survive

beyond its niche? Or is this the beginning of the end? Welcome to a

bonus edition of the podcast. My name is Martin Lee. When I have something requires that a deeper look

sometimes, you might find these bonus shows showing up in your feed. Speaking of which,

Patreon supporters get the shows seven days exclusively first, and then we put it into the free feed.

So no need to pay for Patreon, five or ten dollars a month. Some people pay more to support my work here. This is how I own a living these days. Just wait a week and you'll get it with ads, but you know, I know people sometimes skip those. So let's get into the cyber truck then. I've been thinking about this for a long time over the Christmas holidays as well. I've been reading some news about various people around the world, trying to make it compliant,

almost people doing their own individual crusades.

Well, one of those chaps is Raven Seahulzer.

He has a workshop in Basel in Switzerland, and it represents a microcosm of the cybertruck's global

predicament. The founder of Teselab, a used Tesla marketplace, spent the past year disassembling a fleet

of five cyber trucks and rebuilding them from scratch, all to comply with European regulations.

The trademark sharp edges have been blunted with rubber

coverings, electrical wiring has been overhauled, yellow blinker lights for instance, and new

front bumpers have been engineered to meet pedestrian safety standards. The vehicle,

...