Tesla wants the Cybertruck in Australia but it will need big changes before it can make its way down under

Tesla wants to bring the Cybertruck to Australia, but there are a few hoops it will need to jump through first.

Due to its unique design, the Cybertruck is not street-legal in most countries.

On top of that, there’s the question of the steer-by-wire system, which is also unregulated in most countries.

Then, of course there’s the fact that people drive on the other side of the road in Australia, so the steering wheel would have to be moved, too.

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Why Tesla is finding it so difficult to sell the Cybertruck anywhere other than the U.S.

Tesla unveiled the Cybertruck over a year ago, but even though the company teased it in China and Europe, it’s still only available in North America.

Tesla knew all along the Cybertruck would have to be completely redesigned for other markets, but that hasn’t happened yet.

To be deemed road-legal in other markets, the truck would have to undergo a pretty decent redesign.

Due to its sharp angles and edges, a Cybertruck that could be used in Europe or Australia would potentially have to look totally different.

And what would be the point of a Cybertruck that looks like a normal truck, some people might ask.

For countries with left-hand drive, Tesla would also have to move the steering wheel (and therefore the steering rack and pedals and so on) to the ‘other’ side of the vehicle.

And, on top of all of that, Tesla has a lot going on.

It’s currently focussing heavily on its AI products including the Tesla Optimus and robotaxi.

Maybe sooner or later the rest of the world will get a production Cybertruck, but we won’t hold our breath.

Can you import Cybertrucks privately?

In theory, as a private individual, you can import any old car you want from anywhere you want as long as you’re prepared to go through the bureaucratic process necessary to make it drivable on the road.

A few months ago, two Cybertruck owners in the UK went viral for the absolute (bureaucratic) hell they had to go through to modify the truck for UK roads.

They had to make a million changes, some of them small and some of them not so small, but that still wasn’t enough, and the UK police eventually seized one of these trucks because of, drum roll, the steer-by-wire system.

The steer-by-wire system seems to be the root cause of all these homologation issues.

Steer-by-wire means the steering wheel is not physically attached to the wheels, only digitally, and that’s a type of technology that exists in a gray area in many countries outside of North America.

Some of the images used for this article are generated with AI

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