Did Tesla remotely deactivate a Cybertruck in the middle of a highway because the owner featured it in an unauthorized music video? The story already seemed highly unlikely, and on Monday afternoon, Tesla tweeted about the video, saying, “This is fake – that’s not our screen. Tesla does NOT disable vehicles remotely.â€
On Sunday, Instagram user @bighuey313 posted a video of his supposed deactivated Cybertruck, complete with a flashing red warning message on the truck’s main touchscreen. “Dog wtf my cybertruck just shut off on the freeway! 😡†he wrote in the caption. “Almost just crashed wtf @teslamotors.â€
The owner also posted an image of what he claimed was a cease-and-desist letter from Tesla’s vice president of legal affairs, Dinna Eskin. The letter cites “unauthorized use of Tesla’s intellectual property in musical content distributed under your name.â€
The video quickly went viral on BlueSky, where anti-Elon Musk sentiment has helped fuel nationwide protests against Tesla. But users quickly noticed a number of discrepancies, such as the fact that the letter opens “We represent Tesla†despite being signed by the company’s in-house counsel. The letter also uses Eskin’s old title, “Sr. Director and Deputy General Counsel,†despite her current title of VP. And the warning message isn’t formatted like Tesla’s typical in-vehicle alerts and notifications. An X user speculated that the flashing red title was likely just a YouTube video playing on fullscreen to simulate a legitimate error.
Despite these issues, the video went viral on BlueSky, X, and Reddit — and likely will continue to travel far and wide, confirming many people’s prior opinions about Tesla and Elon Musk.
Update August 11th: Tesla posted on X confirming the video is fake.
Original Source: https://www.theverge.com/tesla/757594/tesla-cybertruck-deactivated-viral-video-fake
Original Source: https://www.theverge.com/tesla/757594/tesla-cybertruck-deactivated-viral-video-fake
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