There has been some whining from truck owners about a non-issue of supposedly having to reach over the Cybertruck's sail pillars. Nice to see a video of this in action because for people of average height its going to be a non-issue and even if someone isn't quite average height the overall storage options including elements like the the sail pillars actually being storage compartments also makes this a non issue. Lets assume first the accustomed truck owner don't want to do anything differently then they are used to. Figure the average man is 5ft 8 inches tall. The top of the sail pillar at its highest part looks to be 5ft 3 inches. The truck will drop 4 inches. That means the sail pillars are about 4ft 11 inches at their highest point. A 5ft 8inch man case see over that and will have 2ft 10 inches of arm span to reach down and grab things out of the bottom of the bed. Some one 5ft 8 even with shoes on might be up on tippy toes if something were to slid up against the back of the bed, some one 6ft could easily reach down to the bottom and grab, neither would have trouble seeing. There is a little bit of thickness to the wall but it gets narrower at the highest point of the bed and it leans which makes it easier to reach over. But in a normal truck there would need to be a tool box because the bed isn't enclosed. If you adjusted for that it might be necessary to reach over 4ft 8 inches or so in the worst case of the sail pillar. By the time you meet the middle of the bed there is no difference because the truck drops down . With a tool box subtracted out there might be only a 1.ft and a half of bed where there is more side wall to reach over. But lets consider now the positive differences. Sail pillars give you a natural base to secure the taller items against. The sail pillars are super easy to reach built in panel truck type storage without having to buy blocky heavy panels. Look at how many real truck guys that uses trucks for work opt to convert to panel trucks where they can no longer reach into the bed at all. The cyber truck is easier to load because of the ramp and the drop down suspension. The Cybertruck gives you far more storage space that is usable from front to back than an F150. You can simply load the huge frunk first. This is like an lower down tool box. you don't have to climb into he bed to reach, that isn't take up bed space. If you had to the passenger compartment has huge room in and the back and a flat floor. There is a divider to the right of the middle front passengers feet- possibly there for structural support but looks like it could keep stuff from sliding. Completely flat floor behind the front seats and great leg room provides more room for easy temporary storage if need be. No wheel well intrusion provides some more easy storage. And vault enclosure provides 100 cubic ft of storage. And there is a small sub bed storage box toward the back of the bed for easy reach- almost like a small too box you can reach from the tail without having to climb in. It is a van like amount of storage. 16 inches road clearance, class leading attack and exit angles and a fully flat bed and double the payload weight capacity of a Raptor even in the base Cybertruck trim make it easier to get to close to your actual job site. Let us note also that the break over angle with a flat bottom should be maximal. _____________________ Like to just add something that is current. Fossil fuel troll Bill Maurer was whining about the 300klbs pulling capacity. Well when Ford did their 1 million lbs tow capacity video that was dishonest because no their electric truck is going to pull that without the aid of the load being on rails and steel wheels and going a few mph. Musk was talking about pulling capacity with proper tractive effort (traction plus loading weight) that would align with real world towing speeds. That was a realistic effort of the torque the Cybetruck electric motors could provide. ICE trucks can't pull much more than their rated capacities for any real world speed scenario. Ford's demonstration was good in that it put bubas on notice but bad because some without more understanding would find the articles showing Ford's trick only took 15-150 hp or so and same ranges (if memory serves on torque) well within the ICE range to pull. Fords trick was much easier than the Model X pulling a 300klbs airliner a 5mph or so. You see people pull huge loads with their teeth. So it will give some people the false idea that they obsolete ICE isn't as obsolete as it is. But to under stand what Musk is saying think of what Tesla semi can pull with 4 model 3 motors. Just the speed and acceleration difference at full load tells you it has something like 7.5x the rated towing capacity of a class 8. A Ford pickup rated for 35klbs towing is rated that way because of dual tires in the back and extra weight (dead weight to a large extent) in the pick up itself and reasonable brakes. But you can take Fords most powerful ICE truck motors and multiply them by 7.5x to get Cybertruck's real pulling capacities and its real torque potential. This is why what has played out where a full pick up beats a ICE 911 will only be much more severe over the next few years as the public comes to understand the torque/pulling difference with electric motors. You can be sure the Cybertruck will pull its load 3x faster 0-60 than any F150 or F450 or F750. This is nothing new its why trains and dump trucks and tanks have electric drive and it only gets much better when batteries replace diesel generators in those application.
This is wrong for multiple reasons. The first and most obvious is that the rear suspension of the Cybertruck dropping 4 inches doesn't mean that the entire truck, nor the highest point above the cab, will drop 4 inches. Simple geometry will show that the mid-point between the front and rear axles will drop 2 inches. Fortunately the front end of the ("short bed") bed is rather closer to the rear axle, so I would guesstimate it will lower about 3 inches, which definitely will still be too high for anybody not a giant to reach over the very high side down into the bottom of the bed. (Of course, going into the challenge of a two-headed llama like me reaching over the sides into a pickup bed is rather off-topic for this discussion. I'm not the target market for the Cybertruck. ) The other reason why that assertion is wrong is that the bed sides are a lot thicker than they are on a normal pickup. So someone attempting to reach into the bed must reach over not only the height, but the width of those walls. It's nice that Tesla has put in built-in storage lockers right where a typical pickup driver would stand when getting out of a pickup and immediately reaching in to grab something out of the bed. (I speak from experience here.) Between that and the frunk, the Cybertruck will have much less need for a lockable bed box than most pickups. But let's not pretend that someone actually using this pickup to carry stuff won't find it inconvenient that the "fastback" design and the thick "vault walls" make it much harder to reach into the bed to grab something lying flat, when standing on the ground, and apparently impossible for the average person to do so.
There is other trucks with the exact same issue so, who really cares? It's just people trying to come up with reasons against the Cyber Truck. And even on normal trucks I had issues with stuff that I want able to reach. I believe it's a non issue.
Well, both my Grandpa's 4-on-the-floor postwar Ford pickup, and the circa 1992 Toyota Truck pickup that I owned some years back, were 2WD pickups. I have noticed that 4WD pickups have higher ground clearance, and some of those oversized pickups-on-steroids made for the past several years (or maybe it's even a decade or two by now) are so obscenely bloated and almost insanely tall that perhaps the bed is too high off the ground for the average person to reach into when standing on the ground. I wouldn't know; I've never tried to use a 4x4 pickup, let alone one of those absurdly oversized whales like the larger GMC pickups.
