Ineos Grenadier vs Tesla Cybertruck

What's the difference?

The Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster is best regarded as a charming old-school oddity in an increasingly cookie-cutter dual-cab ute market.

In the same vein as the Suzuki Jimny, Jeep Gladiator, and Toyota LandCruiser 70 Series, this ute is for those of us who really like driving to be a fully immersive experience and don’t mind a few sacrifices and some discomfort along the way.

Good on Ineos for giving it a crack.

Weird, wild, unnecessary, arguably horrific to look at, or at least challenging, too fast, too silly, the Cybertruck is many things, but all of the bad things are obvious from a distance while you only realise just how impressive, clever and intense it is once you take it for a drive.

The drive-by-wire steering alone is a revolutionary bit of tech that will surely bleed into the wider world. 

Overall I thought I would hate it, but I walked away, head still shaking, with grudging respect approaching admiration for the Tesla Cybertruck.

The Quartermaster is 5400mm long (with a 3227mm wheelbase), 1943mm wide, and 2019mm high. It has a listed kerb weight of 2718kg and a 14.5m turning circle.

I’m always reluctant to talk about any vehicle’s design but it’s easy with something like this ute.

The Quartermaster has a distinctive look. It’s blocky, hard lines everywhere, and it’s straight up and down, old school.

Substantial side steps/runners, exterior utility belt (a integrated feature by which you can attach accessories, tools, or cargo to the Quartermaster’s exterior), and BFGoodrich All-Terrain KO2 all-terrain tyres on 17-inch alloy wheels add to this ute’s presence.

It certainly catches everyone's attention, for better or worse because some people like it, some people don't. I happen to be part of the mob who actually like the look of the Quartermaster and its sibling, the Grenadier station wagon, and the design pretty much works overall.

Extras like the black contrast roof, safari windows and raised air intake further set this Quartermaster apart from most other modern dual-cab utes on our roads.

The interior is somewhat spartan but well laid-out and comfortable. It has lots of controls and quirky styling to keep everyone inside occupied and while, at first, it’s all a confusion of buttons, knobs and dials, it soon takes on a more familiar feel as you become accustomed to everything.

Is there anything interesting about a Narwhal, or a rhinoceros? It’s hard to know whether to give the Tesla Cybertruck 10 out of 10 for how interesting its design is, or zero for how offensive it is, but it would certainly get a solid 20 out of 10 for uniqueness.

Sure, in pictures it looks pretty out there, but when you stand before it in all its shiny steel it makes you laugh out loud, to the point where it has taken your breath away.

And then you start to notice all the fingerprints on it. Every time you - or any of its many admirers - touches it, you get nasty, oily stains and keeping it clean would make looking after a car painted in a matte finish look as easy as sleeping. 

So, stainless steel as a choice for constructing a car? Perhaps there’s a reason no one else has ever followed the DeLorean’s lead here, but there’s no denying it grabs your eye, and provides a certain solidity to the whole structure.

Much like a Frank Gehry building, you’re either going to love the Cybertruck and think it a work of modern art, or dismiss it as a childish man’s fantasy made real (essentially that was the design brief for this vehicle, “make Elon a toy”, and it has nailed that brief), but either way you’ll definitely have strong feelings about it.

A car, or even a pick-up truck, with no round surfaces, nor subtlety of any kind, can’t really be described as beautiful in any way. But interesting? Definitely. 

In terms of practicality, it's pretty good news inside the Quartermaster cabin when you first climb in. As mentioned, there is a confusion of dials, buttons, knobs, everything in front of and above you. But give yourself some time to locate controls and understand how to best use them, and you'll be absolutely fine.

As alluded to in Design, the cabin looks really good but it also functions quite well as a work or travel space. Once you are underway and you have a firm understanding of everything, it all feels comfortably familiar.

There are hard plastic surfaces in the cabin, leather accents, as well as plenty of quirky styling cues around the cabin, including port and starboard markings, aircraft cockpit-style controls and more, and you'll have fun discovering those.

The floor has drain plugs and the buttons and switches have an IP54K rating (protected from limited dust ingress and water spray from any direction) with the idea being that, worst comes to the worst, you can always hose out the interior if it gets really dirty.

The Recaro seats, front and rear, are very comfortable. There's not a whole lot of room in the rear seat. You don't get much leg and knee room, especially if you are tall, but the seats are raised for optimised visibility to the front and otherwise, with big glass everywhere and safari windows, it’s an airy and useable space. 

The auxiliary battery is under the rear seat.

All in all, it's a functional and comfortable interior.

Anyway to the business end. The tub is 1564mm long, 1619mm wide (1137mm between the wheel arches) and 485mm deep. It has a sturdy tub liner, four-tie-down points, a load-space light, power socket.

The full-sized spare was located in the rear left-hand corner of the tub and while that’s not ideal and certainly doesn’t optimise the load space, it can be shifted elsewhere – on the roof perhaps – and it’s not as much of an eye-sore as the spare in the GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV tub.

The spare tyre also has the optional lockable storage box ($490) attached to it, so you can throw a bit of gear inside there and keep it secure during your travels.

While the front and rear seats feel plenty spacious, that odd peaked baseball cap roof is a bit challenging in terms of headroom, and I smashed my noggin into it a few times trying to reach into the back seat for more Oreos and Mountain Dew. 

You can pop up the bench seat in the back to create even more space for storage, or to provide a flat floor to sleep on.

You can also lie an American sized pizza box on the vast swathe of dash between you and the wildly angled windscreen, there’s plenty more storage on the floor between you and the passenger and then more storage bins at your hip, as well. A wireless phone charger sits twinned with the spot where you park your Tesla card key.

It’s a practical, semi-rugged feeling space, but with the usual kind of Tesla less is more feeling, except when it comes to the screen, which is stupidly large and requires far too much input when you’re driving to be safe. And there’s still no speedometer where you need one, in front of your eyes, and no head-up display, despite Tesla’s love of other jet-fighter tech, like drive-by-wire steering.

How does one define value when it comes to the vehicular equivalent of a cockroach, one that seems capable of surviving the apocalypse with it indestructible (but possibly slightly rusty in appearance) stainless-steel exterior, HEPA filters (will protect you from pollution, pollen and “industrial fallout”) and (almost, kind of) bowling-ball proof super-strong windows (it can allegedly survive the impact of a baseball at 112km/h - handy if someone is trying to kill you with a baseball)?

And what price can you put on the kind of attention driving a Cybertruck gets you? Perhaps only a Bugatti or a Pagani could match the level of wide-eyed, slack-jawed excitement you see from other people when you drive this thing around. 

Then there’s the fact that it accelerates like an actual rocket, is allegedly so cosseted in the cabin that it’s “as quiet as outer space” (this is a comparison test I am up for, if Elon’s Space X would like to arrange it), and can tow “an average African elephant”, or 4,990kg, and has a 1134kg capacity in that vast rear tray, covered by a standard, automatic tonneau cover that’s so tough you can stand on it.

In that rear tray you’ll find a bottle opener, and some storage tubs with drainage holes to keep your beer cold or your fish frozen. You could sleep in there, on the composite bed, which is tough you don’t need a liner, but why would you when you can sleep in the truck - the dash is so large you could comfortably lie under the windscreen to sun yourself - using 'Sleep Mode', which runs the air con all night from its giant battery to keep it at your set temperature.

Speaking of your battery, you can also charge things with it using the integrated power outlets, and that includes the ability to charge another Tesla, or to re-zap your Tesla Powerwall at home and run your house during a blackout. Or the Apocalypse.

Tesla has put a price on all this, of course, and in America it ranges from US$81,895 to US$101,985. Frankly, that seems like quite good value when you add it all up, or at least it would if the Cybertruck really could tow five tonnes further than the end of the street, and if range - surely something of an issue for an outdoorsy vehicle like this - really could be guaranteed at 547km.

If and when it gets to Australia, of course, its value will need to be reassessed on what is sure to be a much, much larger number.

The Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster is available with either a 3.0-litre inline-six turbo-petrol engine (producing 210kW at 4750rpm and 450Nm at 1750-4000rpm) or a 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo-diesel engine – producing 183kW at 3250-4200rpm and 550Nm at 1250rpm-3000rpm.

Both engines are from BMW. Our test vehicle has the diesel.

This Quartermaster has an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission and a dual transfer case (high- and low-range 4WD), as well as a front, centre and rear diff lock.

This is a nicely refined engine-and-auto combination, offering up a decent punch of power and torque across a broad rev range when it’s needed.

Yes, I’m giving it 10. Because how could you want for more than a torque figure of 13959Nm, and a Ferrari-humbling 630kW of power to boot?

The Cybertruck is the perfect example of Elon Musk’s approach to what we’ll call science, or Twitter, or X. If it can be done, just do it, don’t ask whether it’s a good idea, or batshit insane.

So because he could fit a vast 123kWh battery and two crazy powerful motors to this pick up monster, and that could provide enough grunt to send three tonnes of mass to 100km/h in 2.8 seconds, they did. 

Is it wise? Probably not. Is it wild and almost, somehow, strangely admirable? Yep.

Official fuel consumption is 10.5L/100km on a combined cycle.

On this test, I recorded 12.3L/100km.

The Quartermaster has a 90-litre fuel tank so, going by that fuel figure, you could reasonably expect a driving range of about 730km from a full tank. However, long-range fuel tanks are available, so there’s always that option.

Tesla claims a range of 547km between charges and that even when towing something of “reasonable size” (a smaller Tesla perhaps) it will still get 400km. I, for one, very much doubt that.

Tesla also claims you can recover up to 235km of range with just 15 minutes of Tesla Supercharging, while a charge from 10 to 80 per cent on that same Supercharger would take 44 minutes. On a 110V American plug it would take 110 hours, or 4.5 days, to fully charge from zero to 100 per cent.

First things first, just to put your mind at ease – the Quartermaster is not absolutely terrible to drive on road, in fact it’s actually quite nice: planted, comfortable (on coil-spring suspension), and refined (for a ute).

It’s no surprise that a long four-wheel-drive ute does really well on-road, even if it is a heavy solid axle vehicle and not particularly dynamic.

What's also not surprising – because on paper this is an off-road beast – is that the Quartermaster is very capable off-road.

It has three diff locks (front, centre and rear), off-road mode, hill descent control and more, so it's an effective mix of traditional mechanicals and driver-assist tech. That's the dual range transfer case, but it also has electronic traction control. The 3.0-litre turbo-diesel engine and the eight-speed automatic transmission work well in on-road situations and it's also a clever smooth combination in off-road scenarios.

So there's plenty to like about this ute when it comes to 4WDing.

Be aware though: this is a big, heavy vehicle with a long wheelbase, so it takes considered driving to steer around – it has a big turning circle at 14.5 metres – but that's not to say those dimensions and those characteristics ruin it off-road because they don't. The Quartermaster simply requires a bit more thought when you're driving it.

If you haven't spent a lot of time or any time in vehicles like this, such as the Toyota LandCruiser 70 series or of that sort of ilk – big long old-school four wheel drive utes – then you may have a bit of an issue with the steering. It is slow, and there is a lot of play to it, especially off-centre. It does feel floaty and it takes a lot of effort and constant micro-corrections when you're driving to keep it on track and to keep it going where you want to. Put it this way: it’s not self-centred so you have to work at getting it back on track once you’ve taken on a turn.

But I like that, because four-wheel driving should be an entirely immersive experience, you should be always directly involved in the process and in this ute you are.

There’s plenty of power and torque across a nice rev range, with plenty of torque down low, which is crucial when off-roading.

And while the stretched wheelbase makes the underbody vulnerable to knocks and scrapes, especially over more severe 4WD-only terrain, the Quartermaster actually manages quite well.

Its approach, ramp breakover and departure angles – 36.2, 26.2 and 22.6 – are reasonable for something of this size and with 264mm of ground clearance and 800mm of wading depth, this ute has the measurements to cope with most off-road challenges you could throw dirt at.

Another thing I like about the Quartermaster is the fact it retains an old stubby stick, that’s working off the dual-range transfer case, to put the vehicle into low range and that's a welcome touch and a practical nod to the past, rather than a button or a dial.

As mentioned earlier, it has live axles, so there’s flex through the front and rear, although it'd be even better with a swaybar disconnect system onboard (as in the Jeep Gladiator).

This Trialmaster gets the BFG KO2s and where the standard tyres on a contemporary ute may not be up to scratch in off-roading terms, the KO2s work really well. It’s impressive what a difference decent all-terrains make, and if you want to get into the sloppy stuff, then you might consider getting some mud-terrain tyres.

So the Quartermaster is a very capable four-wheel-drive ute and there's a lot to like about it, but the issue with a vehicle like this is that people may come into it not understanding exactly how it rides, how it drives and how involved you actually have to be and the fact that there are lots of compromises, indeed some sacrifices.

You're not getting as much driver-assist technology as you get in other utes, and it doesn't drive as precisely or perhaps as comfortably as some other utes – but that's missing the point.

The Quartermaster is about that all-encompassing off-roading experience. And if you get in one of these things, you have to be all-in, ready for the bumps and the discomfort and the effort it requires but all of those things add to the appeal of this ute, rather than detract from it.

And that's a major point of difference with this ute over others in the market: in being faithful to the spirit of old-school 4WDing, Ineos has been willing to forgo those things which people have come to expect and as a result it may only draw the faithful, the committed, who are all-in for off-road adventure.

Where the Quartermaster falls short, however, is in terms of practical use because its payload is 832kg in the diesel version and that’s disappointing, especially when a 2.8-litre LC70 GXL dual-cab can cope with 1325kg.

It is rated to tow 750kg unbraked, and 3500kg braked and with a kerb weight of 2718kg it has a GVM of 3550kg and a GCM of 7000kg.

It’s fair to say the Tesla Cybertruck is an intimidating prospect in the metal. It towers over you and seems to stretch into forever, because it does, at 5.68m long (too long to fit in a standard Australian parking space). 

It’s also a full 2.0m wide, 1.8m tall and weighs 3.1 tonnes, but along with its size comes the fact that it just doesn’t look… right. There’s not a round surface on it but there are plenty you could cut yourself with, or lose a finger in.

It’s no less weird inside, as the giant A-pillars, vast dash, crazy yoke steering device and graphically lovely screen confront you, making it feel like you might be on the Starship Troopers ride at Universal Studios rather than in an LA car park.

Then, while you’re getting used to this and having a good laugh at the Easter egg on the touch screen (smash the windows on the graphic of the car with your finger and you hear the sound of Elon freaking out at the infamous failure demonstration of its unbreakable glass), you’re warned that it is going to be almost as weird to drive as it looks.

This is, in part, due to the Cybertruck’s unique drive-by-wire steering - a technology previously popular only with jet fighters and other planes - which allows it to have a yoke instead of a steering wheel without being annoying, because your hands will never cross over and be left grasping air.

Yes, the Infiniti Q50 debuted with 'steer-by-wire' a decade ago, but featured a full mechanical system as a fail-safe back-up. No mechanical safety net here.

The Cybertruck has less than one full turn lock-to-lock, and it has not just passive but aggressive rear wheel steering, allowing the back wheels to turn the opposite direction to the front ones at parking speeds, quite radically, which, once you’re used to it, makes it much easier to park than seems possible. 

It also makes this Tesla incredibly sharp and direct and means that, for the first few minutes of driving it you will turn the wheel, sorry, yoke, far more than necessary.

Once you get used to it, however, it is fabulous, as long as you don’t think about what would happen if the software that’s the only thing connecting you to the wheels - rather than actual moving parts - failed. 

The steering makes the Cybertruck shrink around you to the point where you forget, at times, just how big it is. Combined with the low centre of gravity and the bank vault solidity of the chassis, it also makes it turn-in and handle like a much smaller sports car (and it has a turning circle that defies belief, one that’s sharper than some sedans).

Speaking of sports cars, most of them won’t keep up with the Cybertruck if there’s someone brave in its driving seat. Indeed, you’d need a proper hypercar to match its constant, surging torque (no, I don’t believe it can really have 13,000-plus Newtons, but it’s a lot), and its purely outrageous, surging speed.

Tesla has a habit of calculating torque at the wheels, not the motor(s) and gearing reductions increase torque markedly. 

Yes, I do believe it would do 0 to 100km/h in three seconds, maybe slightly less, but I’m also equally sure it’s not a great idea to try (I'm also very grateful I didn't experience the problems with the throttle sticking open on some examples that recently saw every Cybertruck recalled).

The problem is that 3.0-tonne weight figure, and all that mass. It feels beyond weird to move something this big, that fast, and it quickly makes you pause for a chilling thought about whether it’s all going to be able to stop again. It does, or it did for me, but boy, it puts the wind up you every time you try.

Overall, though, it’s hard to overstate just how surprisingly good, and yes, at times even fun, the Cybertruck is to drive.

Oh, and for the trainspotters out there, claimed efficiency is 22.4kWh per 100km, but we actually saw 27kWh during our two days of test drives. Our second Cybertruck was also making some distinctly weird metallic clanking noises from underneath, particularly when we switched between forward and reverse.

It might be worth waiting for the second generation of this thing before buying one, but that won’t be an issue for Australian fans, anyway.

As far as its off-road abilities, we managed to find a bit of beach in a car park and pointed the Cybertruck at it. After an initial fearful moment of being sure we were going to sink, we just put the foot down and let all that torque power us out of trouble. It felt effortless.

Some unkind experts have referred to the Cybertruck as a “death machine” and a “guideless missile”, pointing out that putting a stainless steel body on top of a big old battery is inherently problematic. As is the lack of crumple zones.

Making all this very pointy metal move as fast as a McLaren supercar has also raised some questions about sanity.

Then there was the recent recall of every Cybertruck built so far:

"Cybertruck owners reported that their vehicles were at risk of getting stuck driving at full speed due to a loose accelerator pedal. Video showed the pedal itself falling off and the piece beneath wedging itself into the car’s interior, which would force the vehicle into maximum acceleration. One driver was able to save himself from a crash by holding down the brake pedal."

Elon Musk, has claimed, however, that the Cybertruck, is “much safer per mile” than its competitors. 

Australia has different pedestrian safety regulations to the US and while some have posited that the Cybertruck will pass, pointing to the fact that you can buy an even bigger Ram truck here, others are not so sure.

The Tesla Cybertruck does have six airbags, and a suite of active safety features as part of its 'Autopilot' system, but it does not yet have 'Full Self Driving'.