Tesla Cybertruck vs RAM 2500

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. 

It was a couple of years ago when Ram Australia attempted to ween its faithful off the Hemi petrol V8 engine. It wasn’t an easy process, either, as the warbling V8 had really resonated (no pun intended) with buyers Down Under.

But Ram still turned the PR machine up to 11 to convince us that the new turbocharged inline six-cylinder replacing the V8 in the 1500 pick-up was the full quid. As in, we were invited to perform 0-100km/h dashes in the outgoing V8 and the new turbo-six, to demonstrate how much faster the new six was (and it was, particularly in High Output form).

So guess what happened next? Yep, Ram is reintroducing the Hemi V8, claiming its buyers never stopped wanting one. Of course, it’s not that cut and dried: The V8 won’t be available in the 1500, but it is making its first volume appearance in the 2500 Heavy Duty version of the Ram pick-up. (The 2500 range was updated about a year ago.)

So it’s not quite the about-face by Ram that it might seem. But it’s still recognition of the fact that the people who populate the full-sized pick-up market aren’t quick to dispense with tradition.

Speaking of tradition, the badge on the new Ram 2500 V8 is 'Warlock' a name first used on Chrysler’s (and Dodge’s) tricked-up pick-ups of the 1970s and sold under the 'Adult Toys' range of utes and vans.