Tesla Cybertruck Gets New Wheel Covers And Tires To Replace Tire-Chewing Ones But It Looks Better Without Them

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Remember back in February when it was discovered that the Cybertruck’s custom wheel covers were chewing up the sidewalls of the Cybertruck’s custom tires? Sure you do, we all do, mostly because it was a very telling example of how an awful lot of the decisions that went into the Cybertruck seemed to be dictated by what looked cool as opposed to what, you know, didn’t destroy your own tires.

As a result, Cybertrucks have been being shipped without any sort of wheel cover and just rocking the quite decent-looking 14-spoked wheels. The bare wheels must be causing some amount of range hit, though, and now Tesla has revealed new wheel covers and tires for the Cybertruck, and they’re a really terrific example of how a letdown looks when rendered in plastic and rubber.

The new wheel covers and tires (still with Cybertruck-specific sidewall designs) can be seen on some pictures from Tesla and various social media accounts, and the response to the new wheels and wheel covers isn’t all that great. It could be because the original design, with its attempt to very tightly integrate the wheel cover and tire design, was so bold and ambitious, or it could be because the new design of the wheel cover already looks like the kind of cheap plastic wheel covers from Pep Boys that you see propped against a yield sign on a traffic island after it flew off the right rear of someone’s Altima.

Here, you can judge for yourself:

Here’s a bigger image of the new tire and wheel cover:

Wheelcover1

They just look…cheap? Boring? And boring is quite an achievement for the Cybertruck, because say what you will about it, it’s not boring. Then there’s the fact that on the tires that were custom-designed for this car, there are 18 little distinct shield-shaped embossed designs, nine wide ones and nine narrow ones. The wheel cover has seven spokes, so good luck aligning those in a way that feels visually right.

Tesla’s website still shows the Cybertruck with its original very integrated but tire-destructive wheel cover-and-tire combination:

Oldctwheels

The old wheels were seven-spoked as well, but the tire matched those seven spokes in its design, too. If we look closely at the old tire/wheel cover (top) and the new tire/wheel cover (bottom) we can see other differences:

Wheelcomparo

Look how the new tire has that nonagon-shape around the middle of the sidewall, which, again, clashes with the seven-spoked cover design. It’s like the tire people were told to make something that works with nine points and the wheel cover people were told to make something with seven points. I don’t get it – how could they not make these two things work together better? Did the missing two spokes get laid off recently?

It’s worth noting that the wheels look pretty good without any wheel cover at all. David took this picture of the Cybertruck cover-less wheel when he was testing one out recently:

Nocoverwheel

The wheel itself has seven main spokes that bifurcate into a pair of smaller spokes at each end, for a total of 14 spokes. That still works great with a tire that has a seven-spoked design as well. These look fine! But, they must reduce range at least some significant amount (which could be as little as a mile or less) without the aerodynamic plastic wheel cover, because why else would they bother to make a new one?

But, they did make a new one, and, like so many things about the Cybertruck rollout, it can’t quite live up to the hype. There’s no $40,000 Cybertruck coming, it’s not bulletproof, the stainless steel finish can get rusty and takes more maintenance than most guessed, there’s been a recall for a silly but important detail already, and while none of these things is a show-stopper, it also doesn’t really seem surprising now that the fix for the bold but flawed wheel setup looks like something your high school friend ordered from JC Whitney to stick on his Chevy S10.

Oh well. Another Tesla triumph!

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82 thoughts on “Tesla Cybertruck Gets New Wheel Covers And Tires To Replace Tire-Chewing Ones But It Looks Better Without Them”

  1. Article is all wrong. Do your homework.

    Tesla is now offering a NEW 20″ Core wheel with thicker sidewall 35″ All Season tires. (340 mi range).

    Previously option is still available: 25″ Wheel with smaller sidewall, 35″ All Terrain tire (318 mi range).

    2. Well that’s objectively untrue. They always had 20″ runs, never 25″. In fact, I have never heard of a 25″ rim, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t exist.

      1. Correct. The original set up has the same size tires and wheels as the new option. The difference is originally set up is for AT tires with 25″ hubcap that has been recalled. The new setup is for AS tires with a 20″ hubcap. The 20″ hubcap is not the NEW replacement for the recalled 25″ hubcap. Still waiting for the new version of the 25″ hubcap that doesn’t chew up the tires.

  4. I’m loving my dual motor, regardless of what all the arm chair drivers want to think. I would however not choose those tires!

    1. I think it’s great that you love your vehicle. I love my Maverick in spite of its flaws, too. What others think doesn’t matter.

  5. My theory is that the new wheel covers were designed to match the old tires, and their designer/s were never told that there’d be a tire sidewall design change along with a new supplier. Meanwhile, the folks at Pirelli presumably never thought about the number of spokes on the Cybertruck’s wheel and hubcap, or else someone at Tesla told them to make it look a bit off, thinking “hey, it looks cool” without considering the wheel/hubcap either.

    I also like how the wheels look without hubcaps, and Canopysaurus is right, I think moon discs would be perfect.

  6. This was always such a dumb idea; it’s a truck and those hanging off plastic bits on the hubcap would just get destroyed if you ever went offroad anyway. I get what they were trying to do, but imho it’s like the first gen Volt that painted the top of the doors black to look more ‘concepty’, just stupid designers pushing bullshit over functionality; and I’m a designer, but there is a time and place.

    1. I think the Volt thing was that the body sides were way too tall in relation to the side glass but they (for some undetermined reason) weren’t just able to make the windows bigger so they tossed on a weird kludge.

      It would have looked worse without the black paint, though it would have looked best with more glass.

  8. Something that just occurred to me is that the old design would also require specific careful orientation of the tire relative to the wheel, something that I don’t think tire shops ever pay any attention to while mounting. So that adds more complication to Cybertruck (still can’t say it without laughing) ownership.

    Just when you think something can’t get any more stupid.

    1. Only if the hubcap is aligned with the wheel studs. There have been many hubcap designs that have had no relation to the location of the wheel studs. Regardless, any cap that extends beyond the outer diameter of the rum is a terrible idea.

  9. When I first saw pictures of pre production prototypes, I thought that the hubcap design was likely to damage the tires. But I thought to myself, surely, even Tesla would make sure to design them in such a way that it wouldn’t damage tires. I mean, it would have had to show up in testing after all. Clearly I overestimated Tesla.

    1. Yeah, it would be very surprising if it didn’t show up in testing, which means it did and they still went ahead with it anyway

  11. I miss the old Elon Musk who would stick with a bad idea until it actually worked. The new “just make it go away and then you are fired” Elon is no fun.

      1. Yeah, they actually work great. But they do have design limitations. I like to rag on Tesla, and I think it’s stupid the amount of money they probably spent perfecting them, but the end product actually isn’t bad. Could have just gone with more traditional doors (or sliding doors like a minivan) and saved a ton though.

  13. The old and new don’t look all that different to me. The new ones maybe look a bit less busy and probably work better with your average tire.

  14. Can we celebrate that this thing actually has sidewall. Maybe not as much as I like but still better then a lot of what I see coming off the lot.

  16. …or it could be because the new design of the wheel cover already looks like the kind of cheap plastic wheel covers from Pep Boys that you see propped against a yield sign on a traffic island after it flew off the right rear of someone’s Altima.

    Poetry.

    2. They both look like those black plastic compost bin covers to me. I can only hope the contents of a cybertruck are similarly recyclable.

      1. They come with 3, then as the vehicle ages it sheds them. When it runs out of hubcaps it starts shedding wheels. Its how you tell the age of an altima.

    1. they did have a rubber lip on them already, it wasn’t the material, it was the fact that under load/use the two surfaces rubbed against each other resulting in excessive wear.

      they would have had to change it to leave a big gap, and it seems that was the worse design option in their view.

  18. They should’ve offered some low profile rims as an option that look closer to the original, feel like that’s the look they were trying to go for.

      1. I’m not saying it’s right but for the look they were gong for low profiles like an Escalade(pro-nounced Es-Ka-Lahd) would’ve looked better. But yeah for trucks high profile is definitely better.

    2. I think the issue is aero. Most people I see take the hubcaps off their Teslas anyway so aesthetically that is probably the correct solution.

  20. The new rubber looks super budget, I’m not sure why my brain see it that way. All they needed was a centre cap cover. Apparently the covers don’t do much for range, anyway. So they are more an ugly nuisance than anything.

  21. So Goodyear developed some custom tread/sidwall for Tesla. Probably after Tesla promised gazillion sales. Tesla fails and now has some Pirelli Scorpions. I wonder if Goodyear got burned on that one.

    1. I hope Goodyear told them to shove it. Tesla commissioned tires and then didn’t bother checking if their wheel covers would interfere with them, which could potentially cause a failure, which could reflect negatively on Goodyear to some people.
      If Tesla came back to them with, “we need an updated design now,” I’d like to think Goodyear firmly declined.

      2. Would Goodyear ever design the wheel covers too? I like to blame tesla but why would Tesla change tires along with the hubcaps? Unless they just looked like crap without the caps and Goodyear laughed when Telsa asked for a redesign.

        1. New hubcaps = no need for the specially shaped tires.

          These are probably cheaper than the original tires, just from not being special.

          1. But Jason says these are special sidewall, so still specialty.

            “still with Cybertruck-specific sidewall designs”

  22. So while I lay on the ground bleeding out from cutting myself on the sharp parts of my Cybertruck I will have something different to look at now

    1. Well, at least you didn’t break a finger while trolling for likes trying to prove the Cybertruck frunk won’t crush a finger AFTER testing it with a stick and seeing the stick get snapped in two. We’ve reached full Idiocracy. Bring on the Brawndo.

  23. because why else would they bother to make a new one?

    If they didn’t offer a replacement, they would probably need to provide some sort of rebate to the people who received the flawed version. I don’t know how far the company would get if their solution turned out to be “don’t use the things that we sold you because they don’t work”. That would potentially open a new tin of annelids.

    If they didn’t offer a replacement, part II, they might also take a PR hit: “Look, Tesla can’t even make a wheel cover properly!”, etc. The Muskovites would continue to be unaffected by logic and would defend the flaw somehow and the rest of us would go about our lives.

    1. You truly don’t get Elon’s genius man. He discovered that wheel covers chew up tires so he designed ones that don’t. In 3 years time you will see GM following suit and releasing wheel covers that don’t destroy tires. And don’t go telling me things like “GM wheel covers have never destroyed tires”. Elon told me that the typical Chevy Silverado needs new tires every 10k miles and Tesla tires last at least twice as long.

  24. How could they not see the old design chewing sidewalls?

    Even I could tell you that when a part that moves / deflects / deforms meets a part that doesn’t, bad things can happen.

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