The Cybertruck Heads to War With Militarized Upgrades

Flying Squid@lemmy.worldmod to World News@lemmy.world – 157 points – The Cybertruck Heads to War With Militarized Upgrades
gizmodo.com

Ramzan Kadyrov, the brutal dictator of Chechnya and prominent Putin ally, has invited Elon Musk to visit him in Grozny. Kadyrov wrote the invitation in a Telegram post where he praised the Cybertruck below a video of him driving the stainless steel monstrosity around Chechen city streets.

Kadyrov smiled like a child while driving the Cybertruck. “We received a Tesla Cybertruck from the respected Elon Musk,” the post said. “I was pleased to test the new technology and was personally convinced that it is called the ‘Cyberbeast’. A real invulnerable and fast animal.”

The bed of the Cybertruck was open and someone had mounted a Russian PK machine gun in the bed. Kadyrov said the car was a dream to drive and that they may soon send it to his soldiers. “I express my sincere gratitude to Elon Musk! He is, of course, the strongest genius of our time…a great man!” He said on Telegram.

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The richest asshole in the world tweeted:

Are you seriously so retarded that you think I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general?

🧐

That choice of word is weird. Did he mean that he sold the cybertruck to the Chechen war criminal?

Btw, dear war criminal, hurry up and go to do the "special military operation" with that death trap

Do you seriously think I am so retarded that I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general?

FTFE

And the answer of course is yes

I mean, a person with a mental disability probably won't do something like this. A narcissistic billionaire who strongly overestimates his cognitive abilities on the other hand absolutely would.

Like "do you think I'm that stupid to give away $100k?? Of course he paid, and of course he paid an extra fee"

To be fair, Tesla autopilot does a decent job killing people in civilian applications so this feels like a natural move.

Well isn't he going to be surprised when he finds out just how ineffective it is against gunfire.

It's not even especially effective against baseballs.

I mean.....that wasn't a baseball. It was a steel ball.

That said, it's a stupid vehicle that is stupidly designed.

Per the Tesla patent, they took the approach of laminating dissimilarly toughened layers with a special adhesive. Unlike actual ballistic glass using a polycarbonate/polymer layer in the stack, Tesla’s 100% glass and glue is just better than tempered:

…at most a 10% chance of failure with an impact of 2 J.

However this glass type is rejected on the side and rear windows by everyone else, because it slows emergency rescue efforts - laminated windshield glass is difficult enough when no other rescue path is available.

Yes but how will it handle rain?

I'd be more curious to see if it could survive an Iraqi sandstorm because my bet is... absolutely not.

Lithium ion is pure shit in extreme temps... and of course an added load of ordinance and armor... this thing will have less reliability and range than a kids power wheels.

Not to mention, they like to catch fire.

I’d be willing to bet tracer rounds would be very effective. Fun fact- the “bulletproof” doors aren’t actually all that bullet proof.

They might stop 9mm pistol fire, but after a few shots, not so much. Rifle? Naw, it’s going through.

An AK bullet can cause spalling through centimetres of steel, and can massacre a non-uparmored HMMWV.

That truck is also sitting on a pile of explosive batteries.

Boom.

Now I'm just remembering the 80s commercials, where the adults are surprised that the kid is driving.....and then the camera zooms out, and it's a power wheels. Which means if the kid was keeping up with the real car, why the FUCK was this adult driving at like 1/2 a mile per hour???

I'm in favor of dictators worldwide standardizing on the cybertruck thanks. It'll be easy to disable all of them with a garden hose or a baseball.

Or an OTA software update. Or some water.

Oh my god, could you imagine Zelensky sending a hacked OTA update to a bunch of battle Cybertrucks and they all just freeze on the battlefield, then turn around and start shooting in the other direction?

I'm going the other way. I'm imagining Ukrainian forces just chucking water balloons at them, and the cars catch fire upon impact.

The Cybertruck being used to quash freedom. Musk would have been Hitler's right hand man.

The Henry Ford of our time (except for Elon not having the mechanical skills I guess). Musk probably would take that as a compliment, but I mean it as an insult

He would simply nazi the nuance of that analogy.

Was Henry Ford technical? I always thought he was, but now that I am older and our current "mavericks" are paper tigers, I wonder how much cult of personality colored our history books.

From what I've read and watched about the man, he's not known for being an engineer, but the manager who streamlined the production and made sure his factory produced every part for his vehicles, so he isn't dependent on suppliers and contractors, and could stamp them as fast as it was humanly possible at the time. With Musk, well, I'm not sure he is even involved enough to know what corners he can safely cut except for safety regulations and QA.

Ford at least started the company he's known for, whereas Elon took Tesla over and unceremoniously squeezed out the two actual founders.

Kadyrov’s goons have an image of being fearsome warriors, but their main talent is maintaining this carefully manicured image. Other than killing/torturing defenceless civilians and prisoners, they stay well away from the actual fighting and take selfies looking fierce with their shiny new not-at-all-battleworn equipment, to the point that people refer to them as the Instagram Corps. His glee at receiving this defective mall-ninja cosplay prop that barely copes with paved roads is on brand with this. If they keep it safely away from the front and have squads of conscripts keeping mud and bugs out of its moving parts, they can take turns scowling menacingly behind the machine gun like Immortan Joe’s War Boys, and if they persuade Putin of the propaganda value of the footage, it may save them from going to the front. At least until a Ukrainian drone finds their toy and torches it. If they make the mistake of riding their new steed into battle, they’re effectively dead meat.

Cannae fuckin wait for some despot to beef it because the cybertruck somehow killed them.

militarized upgrades

Extension cords that reach all the way back to HQ?