When the Cybertruck was first shown off 1421 days ago, the futuristic wedge was unlike anything else the automotive market had ever seen. To be fair, it still is. With a sharp-edged design crafted from stainless steel sheet, it wouldn’t look out of place in your local appliance showroom, fitting in between the stainless Maytags, GEs, and Whirlpools. To paraphrase the famous (apocryphal) Henry Ford quip, it’s available in any color you want, as long as it’s bare brushed stainless steel.
Tesla has always been light on color availability, offering no more than a handful of colors for at least the last few years, and selling white as the only no-cost standard color. For that reason, the Tesla owner community has taken matters into their own hands, wrapping their machines in basically every color under the sun. Tesla saw that there was money being left on the table, and this week introduced the option to have their cars wrapped in a color-tinted paint protection film, starting at the low cost of just $7,500.
I have stainless appliances in my home, and they’re either freshly cleaned within the last five minutes, or they’re in need of a cleaning because fingerprints and skin oils just leave the damned things an unsightly disaster. I’ve known many people with Delorean DMC 12s, as well, and the story is the same. The people who thought stainless surfaces were a good idea have a full-time live-in cleaning staff. They were wrong about appliances, and they’re wrong about vehicles.
It’s possible you won’t have to worry about the smudges and fingerprints if you just get your Cybertruck wrapped. You won’t have to constantly clean the exterior surfaces of your truck, and you won’t have to worry about only wiping with the grain of the stainless brushed finish. The current wrap program offers seven different colors for Model 3 and Model Y buyers, including glacier blue, forest green, rose gold, slip grey, satin white, satin black, and crimson red.
Maybe I’d like the sharp edges of the Cybertruck in forest green better than I do in stainless. Maybe not.