Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to his social media site, X, this week to claim that the automaker would be introducing a package that would turn the new Cybertruck into an amphibious vehicle that could traverse “at least 100m of water as a boat.”
The claim was made in wake of comments made by Tesla’s head of design, Franz von Holzhausen, and its vice president of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy. They appeared in a recent episode of Jay Leno’s Garage, and spoke to the noted Tesla fan about the truck’s capabilities.
In the episode, they mentioned that the 110-volt outlet in the bed of the truck could power electrical appliances, such as a welder or, in a reference to a previous tweet made by Musk, an outboard marine motor.
Read: Elon Musk Says The Tesla Cybertruck Will Be Waterproof And “Serve As A Boat”
Moravy then added that “the vehicle almost floats, maybe you’d have to add a little bit of extra buoyancy, just to keep it up. And, you know, if you’re creative, and you want, you could figure out how to put an outboard motor” on it.
Moravy may rue the day he made the suggestion, because his boss appears to like the idea, and wrote that “we are going to offer a mod package” to do just that. He added that the company would “mostly just need to upgrade the cabin door seals.”
It is not clear how accurate Musk’s assessment of the Cybertruck’s seaworthiness is, but he has been fascinated by the idea of turning it into a boat for quite some time. He has previously expressed a desire for the vehicle to make the roughly 1,100-foot (360 meter) crossing between SpaceX’s Starbase and the South Padre Island, in Texas.
No timeline has been provided for the project, nor is it clear from Musk’s language that this “mod package” was actually in development before he published his post. However, some people on his social media site weren’t terribly impressed by the idea, suggesting that the Cybertruck could also serve briefly as a submarine, and “then a coffin.”
If I could editorialize a bit here, it’s not that turning the Cybertruck into a watercraft is impossible — cars that become boats have been made before. I don’t think Musk’s idea is particularly dangerous, it’s just not very good. I could teach my dog to hit each key on a typewriter, but it would take a lot of time and effort, and in the end he still wouldn’t be able to spell.