New York state trooper Joe Fay is an unabashed fan of Teslas.
Still, he has plenty of gripes about the silver Cybertruck parked in his driveway in Watertown, up by the Canadian border.
And the 29-year-old is not afraid to share his trenchant views about the $80,000 all-terrain electric vehicles.
The tattooed content creator, who dubs himself ‘Just a guy who loves Tesla‘ recently posted a video on his pickup peeves to his 3.5 million TikTok followers.
He called it ‘five things that I hate about my Cybertruck,’ and it’s been viewed 6.3 million times.
New York state trooper Joe Fay says he does not love everything about his new silver electric pickup
Fay’s first complaint is about the paintwork on the trendy, angular four-wheelers.
There are ‘fingerprints absolutely everywhere’ across its sharp-edged stainless-steel body, he says.
‘Every time you touch the truck, there are fingerprints left behind,’ he adds, pointing to a smattering of grubby marks.
Fay goes on to complain about the design of the central console, which he says is static and poorly designed.
He then goes on to bemoan how the truck gate must be closed manually, and how the huge windshield is ‘nearly impossible to clean’ from the interior.
But Fay’s chief complaint about the vehicle comes out of leftfield.
The way Fay tells it, the futuristic electric pickup is so eye-catching that everyday errands take much longer than expected.
‘This truck draws so much attention that you cannot drive anywhere without people coming up to your window, screaming at you, yelling at you, and just wondering what this is,’ says Fay.
Seemingly, Fay has been stuck in parking lots outside stores with bags of groceries unable to dodge conversations with vehicle fans.
‘If you want to go anywhere quick with this truck, you just can’t do it,’ he adds.
‘Every place you go is going to take 10 to 15 minutes longer because people want to stop and talk about the truck.’
Fays video comes as Cybertrucks struggle amid a glut of negative headlines since they were launched at the end of last year.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk once touted the vehicle as as ‘apocalypse proof,’ but the EV has required no less than four recalls since it debuted in late November of 2023.
Joe Fay of Watertown, up by the Canadian border, is an unabashed fan of Teslas.
Donald Trump was gifted a Tesla cybertruck wrapped in an American flag and image of the former president’s near-assassination attempt during his July 13 campaign rally in Butler, PA
Tesla CEO Elon Musk once touted the vehicle as as ‘apocalypse proof’
This week, a raging battery fire has incinerated a Tesla Cybertruck owner alive just off the east Texas coast, in what’s believed to be the first fatal crash for the new EV.
Police reports showed that the fatal incident occurred just outside of Houston at 1:45am local time on Monday.
State officials reported that the trendy, but troubled EV burst into flames after crashing into a concrete drainage channel or culvert, leaving the owner’s body and truck’s license plates and VIN unrecognizable among the char.
But in a boost to the vehicles, former president Donald Trump appeared in a Cybertruck this week as part of a live streamer’s broadcast.
In a wide-ranging 1.5-hour-long interview with popular Kick host Adin Ross at Mar-a-Lago, Trump talked about the American dream and his rival in November’s election, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Ross gifted him the vehicle, which was wrapped in an image from Trump’s near-assassination at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last month.
In the past year, Musk has pitched his company’s Cybertruck as a durable and even Mars-ready space exploration vehicle.
The billionaire tech mogul has put the EV to the test in several eye-catching demonstrations, including shots from a Tommy gun, a 45- and nine-millimeter pistol.
Late in 2023, shortly after the Cybertruck’s launch, the Tesla CEO challenged comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan to attempt to puncture the EV with an arrow.
‘Can I shoot it with an arrow? I bet I can get in there,’ Rogan said during the 2,054th episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.
Musk replied with a laugh: ‘Yeah, it will be fine.’ (Ultimately, the tip of the arrow smashed against the Cybertruck, failing to penetrate.)
Nevertheless, the unusually designed and angular EV has been criticized of leaning into design aesthetics over safety, including sharp-edged trunks and doors that can sever human fingers and other appendages.
This past April, Tesla temporarily halted all Cybertruck deliveries citing reports that the vehicle’s accelerator pedal could easily become stuck at full speed, a discovery that led to the recall of nearly 4,000 Cybertrucks.