This time, the black version of the pickup was spotted on a beach in Southern California. At the wheel was Tesla’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, who envisioned the company’s future innovations.

Is this a bug or feature?

In the pictures below, we see the car from afar, which creates an overall positive and harmonious body impression.

“Don’t worry, the Cybertruck looks great in matte black too”– writes the author of the pictures.

However, closer examination reveals all the flaws of this crude design. As Electrek’s Daniel Golson, who was lucky enough to see the pickup with his own eyes, noted, the car is in truly terrible shape:

• There are huge slits separating the oddly angled stainless steel body panels and stuffing dirt into them.
• The box-shaped taillights are completely offset from each other.
• You can notice in the two images that the black coating, like the decal in general, lags behind the body and even contains bubbles.

While the matte black finish eliminates stainless steel glare and fingerprint issues, it makes build quality issues even more obvious.

• Some of the gaps between panels were large enough to fit a finger in, and even the body had no visible seals or coating (recall that Musk had previously promised that Cybertrucks would be airtight and float on water like boats).
• The bottoms of the front doors looked particularly bad, with large gaps in both width and depth.
• All four wing corner pads were misaligned and poorly installed, but each was a different shape and in different quantities; This seems very strange for a company that already produces millions of cars of various models.
• The rear doors are also poorly fitted and unbalanced. This is especially noticeable when the rear lights are on.

It’s worth remembering that in a leaked email earlier this year, Musk told employees that all parts of the Cybertruck would need to be manufactured “with precision down to 10 microns.” The author of the pictures, of course, did not have a ruler with him, but it seems as if something went wrong in the execution of this order.

Maybe it’s a prototype?

Of course, while we can chalk up at least some of these flaws to the fact that we’re looking at a prototype — or at least we hope it’s a prototype — it’s still surprising that the company decided to showcase it in such close proximity. Tesla’s opening.

It doesn’t appear to be an early prototype as Insideevs states. The details and finishes match what we’ve seen on other “production candidates” that are final versions of the Cybertruck that Tesla has been showing off over the past few months, and nothing about it looks like it’ll be production ready. Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory began pilot production of the pickup earlier this year, and components like the headlights, window glass, cameras, fender flares and underbody cladding on this example appear to be final.