Our Tesla Cybertruck Test Ended With a $58,000 Repair Bill

• We added a Tesla Cybertruck to our One-Year Road Test fleet last year.
• Five months into our test, the Cybertruck was involved in a crash that put it out of commission — forever.
• The final repair bill? Nearly $58,000. Yeah, our truck was totaled.

Well, this didn't go as planned. We bought a Tesla Cybertruck last summer with the intent of putting it through our One-Year Road Test program, but just a few months into owning Elon Musk's brutalist pickup, things came to a screeching halt. Literally.

On December 11, 2024, our Cybertruck was parked on the street outside of a restaurant in West Hollywood when a compact sedan blew through an intersection and crashed into the Tesla's driver's side rear wheel and bumper. As you can see from the photos, there was significant damage to the wheel, tire, stainless steel panel and bumper, to say nothing of the dozens upon dozens of innards that were broken in the process. The impact was hard enough to push the 6,660-pound Cybertruck partially up onto the curb, and part of the rear axle had actually broken off and dropped onto the ground, which gouged into the pavement as the Cybertruck was dragged onto a tow truck.

Then came the headache

Ordinary body shops were unwilling to touch the Cybertruck. We had to use a Tesla shop, and it had to be specially certified to work on the Cybertruck's stainless-steel body. Of those, only two were within a 50-mile radius of Los Angeles, the most Cybertruck-dense population on the planet.

The first shop in Huntington Beach quoted a one-month wait just to get an estimate. And if we wanted to proceed with repairs, we'd then have to wait six more months. The reality of this situation: We'd have to tow our undrivable truck to Huntington Beach, get the estimate, tow it away and store it someplace for five months, then tow it back to be fixed. That was a no-go.

The second shop was in Ontario, California. It also quoted a one-month wait to get an estimate, but there was no delay between obtaining the quote and starting the repairs. We opted to go that route. However, days before our appointment, Tesla called. The shop was overbooked and our appointment was delayed by a month.

Two months after the accident, we finally had a visual estimate. To tear the Cybertruck down for a thorough inspection cost $1,128, and the resulting quote totaled $57,879.89 to repair our truck. The value of the truck unblemished was $86,160. So, after all that, our Cybertruck was considered a total loss.

So, what broke, exactly?

The sheer dollar amount of the Cybertruck's repair bill is one thing; the fact that the estimate itself was eight pages long is another. The damage might not look extensive at first glance, but the key thing that destroyed our truck was the rear wheel being pushed inward, destroying a huge chunk of the rear suspension, the rear drive motor, the rear-wheel steering setup, and a ton of other parts.

Here's the breakdown:

• Stripes and moldings: $619
• Motors and components: $4,191 (including $3,000 for an EV drive unit)
• Motor mounts: $77
• Wheels and parts: $1,758
• Steering: $2,040
• Rear suspension: $9,149 (including $2,500 for a new suspension crossmember)
• Cab and components: $3,800 (including $3,240 for a high-strength steel frame)
• Bed: $8,762.79 (including $1,595 for the outer panel, $4,280 for the aluminum rear section and $1,055 for the bed floor)
• Tailgate: $2,495
• Rear bumper: $2,417.73
• Rear body, lamps and floor plan: $1,668.50 (including $800 for the inner taillamp assembly)
• Miscellaneous parts: $357.22
• Other parts: $5
• Paint and materials: $610
• Tax on parts and materials: $3,320.65
• Labor: $16,584
• Sublet repairs: $25

Grand total: $57,879.89

Postmortem

We paid $101,985 for our Tesla Cybertruck Foundation Series in July 2024. The truck had lots of problems right from the start, and we never got a chance to put it through our full instrumented testing procedure, or even take it off-road. That said, many people on staff did praise the Tesla for its great long-haul comfort, and love it or hate it, this truck certainly turned heads.

After everything was said and done, we sold the remains of our Cybertruck to online auction site Copart for — deep breath — $8,000.

But, hey, at least our ill-fated Fisker Ocean is no longer No. 1 on the "cars on which we've taken the biggest bath" leaderboard.