Featured Image Credit: @jackdidthatt/X / Omar Marques / Stringer / Getty
One of the most famous historic landmarks in Los Angeles was the site of a very modern crash this week when a Tesla Cybertruck went off-road at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Photos shared on X (formerly Twitter) showed the crashed truck right in front of the hotel's famous sign, almost hitting it, and the images make it look like a pretty violent hit.
After posts about the truck went viral, with false claims a valet had been responsible, Tesla and X owner Elon Musk chimed in with his own response too.
Cyberbeast is faster than a Porsche 911, but looks like a truck, so perhaps the valet wasn’t expecting so much acceleration
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 4, 2024
Musk joked: "Cyberbeast is faster than a Porsche 911, but looks like a truck, so perhaps the valet wasn’t expecting so much acceleration."
The exchanges blew up on social media, but as the story got bigger and bigger, the whole thing started to unravel a little bit - it turns out that the original poster was joking around in their post about a valet being responsible.
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They later clarified that they did know the friend who crashed their Cybertruck, and were trying to be funny and made up the bit about a valet crashing the car.
The truth is SO important, and I want to make sure I always share it.
— Greggertruck (@greggertruck) March 4, 2024
I received a message this morning letting me know that the crashed Cybertruck at the Beverly Hills Hotel was NOT driven by the valet. While I can't completely verify the message received, there's now been… pic.twitter.com/zjcQBhELQl
The original person posted on X saying: "Incident happened around 2am and I drafted up this joke of a tweet with employees of the valet and hotel. Not thinking it would blow up, we thought it would be funny to say it was valet and not our friend who just crashed his new Cybertruck... BHH is not at fault!".
Others who had shared the false valet claims posted to clear up the false stories.
The Los Angeles Times also quotes a spokeswoman from the Dorchester Collection, which operates the hotel, as saying: "There was not an employee or member of our valet team involved in the accident."
So, things were actually simpler than they seemed, although the crash itself looks to be a hefty one.
The images in various posts show that the Cybertruck's front-right wheel was completely torn off by whatever combinations of curbs and obstacles it hit in the process.
The rest of the car and its stainless steel panels don't appear too badly damaged, but given how complete the destruction of that front axle looks to be, you've got to assume it won't be driving anytime soon.
Repairs and maintenance have been a slight sore spot for the Cybertruck since it launched, too, with some customers finding that rust appearing on their truck can't yet be fixed by Tesla service centers, so it might be quite a long wait to get a new wheel on this one.
It goes to show that a vehicle as powerful and chunky as the Cybertruck might not actually be that easy to use in everyday situations.
