Tesla Cybertruck ‘Wade Mode’ Fails Mud Test: $100K EV Rescued After Attempting Musk’s River Crossing Claim

A cybertruck owner tested Elon Musk’s claim that the vehicle could “serve as a boat” and “cross rivers”. With activated “calf mode”, however, the $ 100,000 truck got stuck in the mud and had to be recovered.

Cybertruck sinks into the mud

A Tesla Cybertruck owner from Truckee, California, has sunk his $ 100,000 electric pickup in the mud. The driver apparently wanted to test Elon Musk’s claim that the cybertruck “can briefly serve as a boat” and “cross rivers”. Despite activated “Wade Mode” (“Watemodus”), the vehicle quickly stuck and had to be recovered by the California Highway Patrol (CHP).

The officials commented on the incident on Facebook with a decent pinch of irony: “Cybertruck activated ‘Wade Mode’ … and waded a little too far … We are all for testing limits … but maybe not the waterline. Remember that ‘Wade Mode’ is not ‘submarine fashion’. If your plans contain exploring the free nature, make sure that you know your limits and the terrain.”

What the “Wade Mode” really can do

The “Wade Mode” of the cybertrucks is a function that, according to Tesla manual, should enable “to drive in and drive through water such as rivers or streams”. Technically speaking, this mode increases the vehicle height to the maximum and the battery pack temporarily under pressure in order to avoid water damage.

As Electrek reports, however, this function contradicts the Tesla guarantee, which explicitly does not cover water damage that causes such use. In the manual it is also clearly pointed out that it is “the responsibility of the driver to assess the depth of a water before moving in” – as so often, however, this is a direct contradiction to public statements by Tesla boss Elon Musk.

Before the market launch of the cybertruck, Musk had claimed the following on the platform X: “Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to briefly serve as a boat, so that it can cross rivers, lakes and even seas that are not too restless.” He added that the goal was to be able to cross the approximately 360 -meter -long water route between SpaceX’s Starbase and South Padre Island in Texas.