- No matter what any manufacturer claims, your car is not a boat.
When you get a new car, you can be forgiven for driving perhaps with a little more abandon than usual. After all, you should still exercise healthy caution not to put yourself and others in danger.
And you definitely should maintain some common sense, unlike this Texas man.
Jimmy McDaniel was recently arrested for reckless driving. In his defense, however, he didn’t endanger any other road users.
That’s because he didn’t drive on the road. McDaniel got stuck after driving his Cybertruck into a lake.
That wasn’t an accident, either. He purposefully steered his high-tech vehicle into the lake to test its purported wading function.
Well, the function didn’t work, at least not in the depths McDaniel plunged into. Eventually, his Cybetruck got stuck in the lake and he had to jump out, leaving the car in the water.
Wade Mode Engage
The strange events happened on May 18 in Grapevine, Texas. Around 8 p.m., the Grapevine Police Department (GPD) got a call reporting a waterlogged vehicle in Grapevine Leak off Katie’s Wood Park.
The cops arrived at the park and, what do you know, found a Cybertruck in the lake. The EV was listing in the water, some 20 feet off the park’s boat ramp.
At the shore was McDaniel with another person. When questioned by the police, McDaniel admitted to being the car’s owner.
He also said that he had intentionally driven the Cybertruck into the lake. As justification for his actions, McDaniel said that he had wanted to test the car’s Wade Mode.
According to the Cybertruck manual, the Wade Mode allows the vehicle to “enter and drive through bodies of water, such as rivers or creeks.” McDaniel, believing the mode would keep his car safe, bravely plunged into the lake.
Things didn’t go as planned. Instead of cruising through the lake before returning to the boat ramp, McDaniel’s Cybertruck got stuck on the soft lake bottom.
Soon enough, the car started taking in water. The encroaching waves must’ve shorted something and the electric truck bricked up, forcing McDaniel and his passenger to jump out.
The cops eventually alerted the Grapevine Fire Department to haul the disabled vehicle out of the lake. They also arrested McDaniel and charged him with operating a vehicle in a closed section of the lake and not having a valid boat registration.
I think it’s okay to chuckle at that latter charge.
“We wouldn’t encourage willingly driving your vehicle into the water,” Katharina Gamboa of the GPD told CBS News.
“You know, not only that, it’s a safety concern, but it’s also a legal concern as well,” she added.
A Boat Truck?
But could the Cybertruck actually handle water crossings? In theory, yes. In practice… Ehh.
The Wade Mode on the car raises its suspension to the highest possible setting. With that, Tesla claims that the Cybertruck can wade through 32 inches of water, measuring from the bottom of the tire.
That claim, however, comes with a heaping helping of caveats. First of all, the company states that you shouldn’t travel faster than 3 mph when using Wade Mode.
Additionally, the manual cautions you about possible soft or muddy underwater surfaces (like what McDaniel ran into). On soft surfaces, the Cybertruck (or any other car, for that matter) will sink, which might push the water level above the 32-inch safety line.
There are a bunch of other conditions as well. Perhaps most significantly, though, the manual cautions that any damage caused to the car while using Wade Mode will not be covered by the warranty.
That doesn’t sound like Tesla has a lot of faith in this feature. And frankly, we can’t really blame them, what with the Cybertruck’s track record with water.
Before release, Tesla owner Elon Musk boasted that the Cybertruck could traverse “at least 100m [330 feet] of water as a boat” with an unspecified “mod package.” He claimed that the car would “mostly just need to upgrade cabin door seals.”
His claim seems overblown, considering that at least some Cybertrucks have such poor waterproofing that even a car wash can significantly damage them.
So, heed GPD’s Gamboa, when she said: “We don’t encourage your cars going into the water.”