Another day, another Tesla Cybertruck sighting. After a prototype of the electric pickup truck was recently spotted climbing a grassy incline at the company’s new engineering headquarters in Palo Alto, California, the Cybertruck is back in the news after another sighting.
This time, the folks from the What’s Inside Twitter page have spotted a Tesla Cybertruck prototype fitted with a black tonneau cover and glass top. The combination looks striking on the truck, which appears to be a beta prototype just like the one that attended last week’s event at Tesla’s new engineering headquarters.
Tesla has built a fleet of beta Cybertruck prototypes to test ahead of the start of initial production this summer. Over the last few weeks, some of these prototypes have been spotted around California.
This latest sighting (via Electrek) is also from California and it shows the truck filmed from above, likely by a drone. The most important change versus earlier sightings is the new black tonneau cover that looks different from the bed covers shown by Tesla on previous prototypes.
Other recent Tesla Cybertruck prototypes didn’t have a tonneau cover, while earlier ones that had bed covers featured lighter-colored ones – possibly made from a different material as well.
We can’t say what this new cover is made from or if it’s the final production version, but it definitely looks good on the truck, especially in combination with the glass roof panel.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously said the Cybertruck’s tonneau cover will feature embedded solar cells, but we can’t say if that’s the case here. After the unveiling of the original Cybertruck prototype in late 2019, Musk said the production model would have a solar roof option that will add 15 miles (24 kilometers) of range per day.
According to the executive, the tonneau cover is also supposed to be automatically retractable and strong enough for someone to be able to stand on it.
Tonneau cover aside, you may notice that only the left-side headlight and tailight were functional on this particular Cybertruck prototype. The right-side lights weren’t working, and the front and rear light bars were not active either. This suggests that Tesla engineers have more work to do on the vehicle’s auxiliary electrical systems.
