- A Tesla Cybertruck appears to have got stuck on an off-road trail, a new video shows.
- The video shows a Ford pickup towing the Cybertruck.
A video of a Tesla Cybertruck getting towed by a Ford pickup is making the rounds on social media.
In a video that was posted Monday, Tesla's electric-pickup truck appears to get stuck off-roading. The video shows the truck spinning its wheels in a snow-covered field as a Ford truck slowly begins to pull it out of the field. The Tesla has a pine tree in its bed.
Car enthusiast Matt Chambers posted the video on Instagram under the username @mchambers_22 and it later circulated on Elon Musk-owned-X, formerly known as Twitter. In the post on Instagram, Chambers said the Cybertruck had slid of a trail designed for off-highway vehicles on Corral Hollow Trail, an off-roading site in Bear Valley, California.
"No clue how he was so far off trail," he wrote in the post. "Credit to my buddies who went there Sunday and happened to be the ones who rescued him."
Chambers told Business Insider that the Cybertruck driver identified himself as a Tesla engineer. The vehicle was likely undergoing winter testing, he said. BI couldn't independently verify this and Tesla didn't respond to a request for comment.
"Software issue caused their traction control not to work," Chambers said of the Cybertruck.
He said he'd been told the particular Tesla was a prototype. It didn't have towing points or hitches on the body, so it had to be gently pulled by its suspension components, he said.
Meanwhile, the car enthusiast said on Instagram that the Cybertruck didn't have locking differentials — a mechanism that can help improve traction on difficult terrain— "due to software issues." He also said the tires had not been "aired down" to improve traction.
A spokesperson for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While some people joked the video doesn't do much to support Musk's pitch for a "tough" electric truck that could survive an apocalypse, other Tesla fans said on X that the issue might have come down to user error.
"Tesla's inexperienced off-road test drivers are doing a disservice to the Cybertruck," the Tesla fan blog Teslarati wrote on X.
It's not the first time a Cybertruck prototype has appeared to struggle on an off-road course. Last month, a different Instagram user shared a series of videos that showed a Cybertruck tester struggling to get up a dirt hill at another off-roading recreational park in California.
Tesla delivered its first dozen Cybertrucks last month, but the electric-car maker is still in the early stages of ramping up production.