What's the difference?
Tesla’s Cybertruck truly is a giant wedge of cutting-edge technology, and not only because its edges are so sharp you could literally cut yourself, or chop kindling, with them.
No vehicle, nor indeed even any of his stupid ideas, so perfectly represents the manic mania, the whooping, wanton wackiness of Elon Musk as this comically angular, sharp-edged savager of pedestrians.
And yet people, and American people in particular as we discovered on a trip to Los Angeles to drive one, love the Cybertruck. Tesla is said to be holding as many as 2 million pre-orders for it in North America alone and many Australians have expressed interest in buying one, when the company finally manages to build it in right-hand drive, and get it on sale down here, almost regardless of the price (spoiler alert: it’s going to be a lot).
I’ve seen a lot of strange and wildly ugly cars over the years, but if you parked the Cybertruck next to all of them, they’d just disappear because you really can’t take your eyes off its pointy, almost dangerous looking lines. It’s like a human tried to engineer an echidna on wheels.
It does make me laugh, though, and so it was with a smile on my face and acid dripping from my pen that I arrived at a giant Tesla delivery centre in LA to drive it. Come with me.
The e-tron S was inevitable.
The marriage of the latest automotive trends – sporty electrified SUVs with specific performance bits, the e-tron S is as much rooted in Audi’s future as it is in the present.
Having been one of the earliest fully electric German cars in the space, and now with a few years of age on it. Can the e-tron S shine as one of the best? Read on to find out.
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 e-tron S looks mean, feels premium, and blends serious power with surprising grace under pressure. I still can’t shake the feeling I had with the standard e-tron, though, that this car is an Audi sports SUV first and an electric car second, and its weight holds it back from being as fun to drive as I think some rivals are.
If you love Audi and you want to go electric without stepping into something too unfamiliar it’s a great option. If you want an electric car which takes full advantage of what the next generation of technology can offer, keep an eye out, there’s plenty of fresh metal on the way.