--- title: "The Cybertruck’s Battery Pack Is Half Empty, a Teardown Found" description: "During a Cybertruck teardown, car critic Sandy Munro and his team discovered that the vehicle's massive battery pack is half empty." date: "2024-04-10" modified: "2024-04-10" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/cybertruck-battery-pack-half-empty" categories: - "Advanced Transport" tags: - "cybertruck" - "elon musk" - "tesla" - "the digest" --- # The Cybertruck’s Battery Pack Is Half Empty, a Teardown Found ![During a Cybertruck teardown, car critic Sandy Munro and his team discovered that the vehicle's massive battery pack is half empty.]() *\Image: Munro via X\* ## Glass Half Full Tesla's Cybertruck has a mysterious, cavernous space inside its battery pack. During a [teardown of the unusual pickup truck]() by automotive engineer and car expert extraordinaire Sandy Munro and his team, they discovered that the vehicle's massive battery pack is half empty, with tons of space above a layer of cylindrical, lithium-ion 4680 battery cells. "I'd say it's half full..." Cybertruck lead engineer Wes Morrill [tweeted]() in response, confirming that the battery pack is indeed not filling the space. The discovery has led to more questions than answers. Is Tesla planning to double the size of the battery pack at some point, as many fans have [since gleefully speculated]() on Elon Musk's social media platform? Was the EV maker concerned about the weight of the already hefty, 6,600-pound truck? Or was it struggling to keep the battery pack cool? Is the cavernous space [designed to be pressurized](), potentially [enabling the truck to "wade" through water]()? ## Blank Space It's an especially strange decision considering that Tesla has already [announced an extremely bulky expansion battery pack]() that eats up a large portion of the truck's bed to push the truck's range to a more respectable 440 miles. It's unclear, however, if or when the extender will actually hit the market. The existence of the range extender, though, does undermine the theory that Tesla is looking to somehow double the range of future Cybertrucks by filling in the empty space. The truck has already disappointed with its less-than-stellar claimed range of significantly less than 300 miles on a single charge. As [*Electrek* points out](), its 123 kWh makes it the smallest battery pack of any electric pickup on the market. Was Tesla trying to save money on an [already extremely expensive-to-build]() vehicle? And in the real world, customers have found that [after just 10,000 miles](), the vehicle gets just over 200 miles on a single charge. In January, YouTube account Out of Specs Cybertruck [was only able to cover 254 miles]() on the highway, well short of the truck's EPA-rated range of 320 miles. In short, we still don't know why Tesla engineers opted to keep half of the battery pack of the Cybertruck empty, and all we can do at this point is make educated guesses. Was it an engineering compromise, a long-term design decision — or simply a matter of cutting costs? Tesla isn't in the business of talking to the media, so we may never get a definite answer. **More on the Cybertruck:** *[The Cybertruck Seems to Be Breaking Down at an Incredible Rate]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()