Elon Musk’s “Blade Runner” Cybertruck may be just days away from being revealed to the world, but the vehicle, from its final specs to its design, remains a mystery. The Tesla CEO has said that the vehicle will not resemble a traditional pickup truck, which has been confirmed by teasers from the company and clever Easter eggs hidden in the CYBRTRK event invitation and the vehicle’s stylized logo.
Given that Musk has said that the Tesla Cybertruck will resemble an armored personnel carrier (APC) of the future, it’s hard not to see the potential similarities between the vehicle and NASA’s Mars Rover Concept, which was unveiled in 2017. NASA’s Mars Rover Concept looks a lot like an APC of the future, and it looks pretty darn tough. It’s massive at 28 feet long, its ground clearance is no joke, and its modular structure allows it to perform a variety of tasks in the harsh environment of the Red Planet.
Interestingly, Tesla’s CYBRTRK appears to have design elements that could very well be similar to NASA’s Mars Rover concept. Tesla’s Easter Eggs show the Cybertruck with a gently sloping hood, high ground clearance, and an APV-like silhouette. The similarities between the two vehicles’ designs (at least from what Tesla’s Easter Eggs have shown so far) are so notable that one can’t be blamed for speculating that the CYBRTRK could be used by Elon Musk’s companies not only as a disruptive pickup truck on Earth; it could also be used as the basis for a potential SpaceX Mars Rover.
It sounds a lot like a statement from a science fiction novel, but given Elon Musk’s habit of doing unorthodox and implausible things, a dual-purpose heavy-duty vehicle might actually make sense. Musk probably prefers to have as much overlap as possible between Tesla and SpaceX’s technologies, after all. Last September, for example, Musk said that Teslas had the potential to work on other planets. “Teslas will actually work on Mars. You can just drive them, basically, because electric cars don’t need oxygen, they don’t need air. So you can drive them without a problem,” Musk said during SpaceX’s Starship Q&A.
That being said, building a manned Mars rover from the CYBRTRK platform would be incredibly difficult. For a Mars rover project, SpaceX and Tesla would likely focus on making the vehicle as lightweight as possible. This is because the rover is part of a payload being sent to space. Payloads are very expensive, and as a result, the equipment on the CYBRTRK that is useful on Earth is likely irrelevant to a vehicle designed for Mars. Performance is also pretty irrelevant in a manned rover. If Tesla were to build a manned Mars rover based on the Cybertruck, it would have to make massive changes to the vehicle itself, from its battery cooling systems to its equipment.
This would of course be a pretty tough undertaking for Tesla and SpaceX. The challenges of creating a vehicle capable of traversing an alien planet from the bed of an Earth truck are no small feat, after all. Things will be a little easier if SpaceX ends up using the CYBRTRK platform to create an unmanned Mars rover.
Tesla has a wealth of experience with autonomous driving, and that could work in its favor if Elon Musk’s private space company decides to deploy unmanned rovers to explore the Red Planet. With that in mind, a rugged, lightweight vehicle packed with technology and based on the CYBRTRK platform could make sense. Tesla and SpaceX would still have to overcome enormous challenges to create a ground vehicle capable of traveling to space from a pickup truck platform, but there’s no denying that the electric carmaker’s expertise in designing and manufacturing electric vehicles could very well make an affordable and reliable unmanned Mars rover possible.
While these ideas may seem implausible, it is worth noting that a Mars rover project between Tesla and SpaceX is unlikely to pose any problems for either company. The number of rovers needed for the first few years of a Mars mission, whether crewed or uncrewed, will likely be very small, perhaps an order of magnitude smaller than the deployment of the first Tesla Roadster. Thus, both companies could innovate to the limit based on the CYBRTRK platform and it would be no problem. The size of a CYBRTRK-based rover might not even be a problem, provided that SpaceX’s Starship deployment goes smoothly.
Tesla deserves a lot of credit for keeping the CYBRTRK under wraps until now. Given its futuristic elements and Elon Musk’s affectionate references to the vehicle as a sci-fi truck, the pickup could very well be the machine that connects Tesla and SpaceX, at least to some extent. Even if the only parts of the Cybertruck that can be used for a Mars Rover are its chassis and powertrain, such an overlap would still be incredibly useful. Such ideas are crazy, but they could also be classic Elon Musk.
