Glamping with Tesla's Cybertruck and trailer concept

Glamping, a word that combines the terms, glamour and camping, refers to going to campgrounds but having the amenities normally present in a hotel.

Tesla has an interesting Cybertruck trailer concept. It's a large trailer about the size of a tiny house. It’s a nice looking trailer and it reflects the angularity and aerodynamic shape of the Cybertruck. In Cybertruck patents, Tesla shows the Cybertruck pulling a weight of 20,000 pounds, however the official Cybertruck specs say it can tow more than 14,000 pounds. I interpret that as a max weight of between 14,000 pounds and 15,000 pounds.

Now, remembering what we learned in high school physics, you’ll recall that how much weight a truck can tow has three components. The truck has to overcome rolling resistance, air resistance, and gravity. Now rolling resistance increases gradually depending on both the weight of the trailer and the speed you’re trying to tow it. It’s a linear increase. While there’s more rolling resistance at highway speeds than there is at parking lot speeds, it’s not all that much more.

Then there’s air resistance. That’s not related to the weight of the trailer at all. Air resistance is related only to the cross sectional area of the trailer, the aerodynamic shape of the trailer, and the speed of the tow. Air resistance increases as the square of the speed, so that’s a much more significant factor at highway speeds than at low speeds, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the weight of the trailer.

A few months ago, Ford came out with a publicity stunt involving a prototype electric Ford F-150 Lightning towing a million pounds of railroad cars when they were empty. Then they loaded one and a quarter million pounds of pickup trucks into the railroad cars, and the electric Ford towed all that, too (you can watch the full video below).

It was supposed to demonstrate something. All it demonstrated is that Ford likes to lie to people who don’t remember the physics they learned in high school.

The tow was done at slow speeds on steel rails with steel-wheeled railroad cars. Of all the land vehicles currently in use in the US, trains have the least rolling resistance. Maglev trains have less rolling resistance, but they’re not in use in the US. And anyway, maglev trains don’t roll. They float on a magnetic field. So all the electric Ford had to do was overcome a certain small rolling resistance. Admittedly, you or I would have been unable to start those train cars rolling by pulling or pushing by hand, but probably any pickup truck could have done it. It didn’t have to be a Ford.

The reason there’s a weight limitation for towing a trailer is that roads aren’t level. On hills, there are two considerations. The truck needs to be able to tow the trailer up any hill it might come across, and it has to be able to control the trailer when going down any hill it might come across. So if Tesla says the Cybertruck is rated for 14,000 pounds, then it really shouldn’t try towing 20,000 pounds even if that seems possible on level ground or mild hills. But there is a way around this limitation in the era of electric vehicles.

What I’m going to tell you does not come from Tesla, or any knowledgeable source. It comes strictly from my imagination so take it with a grain of salt.

The way the Cybertruck can safely tow a load that’s higher than its rated maximum towing weight is if the trailer has its own batteries and its own electric motor(s). There would, of course, have to be coordination. The trailer would have to respond to the truck driver’s control input, but that’s not difficult to arrange. If the trailer had batteries and motor(s), the range between recharges would not be degraded by towing. If the trailer could be recharged separately from the Cybertruck by a second Supercharger stall, then the length of time to recharge wouldn’t be prolonged.

Now let’s talk about what the trailer could include. I looked up the weight of a standard 30-foot travel trailer. The weight averages around 5,800 pounds. So that leaves plenty of room for amenities. The trailer could expand, for example. It could expand upward when parked, or sideways. Lots of travel trailers do that. So instead of being 30 feet by 8 feet, it could be twice that. Perhaps it could expand sideways on both sides, That would make it 30 feet by 24 feet.

Add to that interior room, an extra roof to cover an outdoor patio, another 8 feet by 30 feet. Cover all that roof with solar panels, and you’d have lots of electricity while you were at the campground. Excess solar electricity created in the daytime would be stored in the trailer’s batteries at night.

Then there are other amenities. In addition to the normal water tanks for drinking, bathing, and other cleansing purposes, there could be a hot tub for two. That would hold 150 gallons of water, 600 pounds. Tesla is good at making heat pumps. Heat pumps can be used to heat or cool the trailer depending on the outside air temperature. If the trailer is parked near a stream or a lake, the heat pump might be able to exchange heat or cooling with the body of water if that would be more energy-efficient than exchanging heat or cooling with the outside air.

While traveling, there should be enough outside video cameras so that the driver would not have blind spots next to or behind the trailer. These should sync with the Cybertruck’s display screen.

The Ford F-150 Lightning has a helpful feature for hooking up the truck to a trailer. The driver first cranks up the trailer’s hitch to the proper height. Then he drives the truck to the front of the trailer so he can see the trailer hitch in the rear camera display. At that point, the truck itself backs up until the truck’s trailer hitch is properly aligned with the trailer’s hitch receptacle. Tesla should do that for the Cybertruck in a software update.

Finally, there should be Internet access via Starlink.

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Tesla Denies WSJ Report Claiming Board is Replacing Elon Musk

YouTube/NYT Events

Tesla has issued a strong denial in response to a Wall Street Journal report (Paywall) which claimed that Tesla’s Board of Directors had initiated a search for a new CEO.

In a statement posted directly on Tesla’s X account, Board Chair Robyn Denholm denied the report unequivocally. As per the statement, Tesla’s board did not reach out to recruiting firms in search of a new CEO.

Earlier today, there was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company.

This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published).

The CEO of Tesla is…

— Tesla (@Tesla) May 1, 2025

Board Supports Elon

The statement reaffirmed the board’s position on Tesla’s current leadership and that the board is highly confident in Elon’s ability to continue executing Tesla’s plans and future growth.

This confidence behind Elon follows his recent statements made during the Q1 2025 Earnings Call that he would be stepping back from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the coming days and significantly reducing time spent there. Instead, he would be returning to focus on Tesla’s operations and the upcoming deployment of Robotaxi.

Shortly after the denial was posted, Elon Musk also commented on the report, specifically tagging the Wall Street Journal and criticizing their handling of the report.

It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the @WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors! https://t.co/9xdypLGg3c

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 1, 2025

We’re glad to see Tesla and Elon set the matter straight, but there could have been a better way to spread this message and maybe even prevent the report from WSJ from going out.

We recently published an opinion piece on why Tesla needs its PR team back, and this specific incident is a good example. Relying solely on platforms like X for critical corporate communications - and in this case, late at night (1 AM EST), with limited reach outside the existing follower base seems like an ineffective way of communicating important company information.

We’d love to see Tesla really put some thought into managing its image, as it seems that several recent reports from major financial news organizations have apparently been wrong.

Either way, the board’s stance is clear - there is no active search underway, and Elon has the full backing and support of the board to lead Tesla toward the future.

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Tesla Megapack: How Tesla Is Reinventing Global Energy Infrastructure

Not a Tesla App

Tesla’s Megapack is rapidly becoming a key component in energy storage and grid modernization efforts worldwide. Though often associated with powering AI infrastructure or industrial operations, Megapack’s true strength lies in its ability to stabilize electrical grids during blackouts and brownouts.

In a recent behind-the-scenes reveal, Tesla showcased the impressive scale of Megapack production at its Mega Lathrop facility, along with real-world examples of how these systems are already transforming energy resilience across the globe.

Mega-Scale Megapack

Tesla is operating the largest utility-scale battery manufacturing facility in North America at Mega Lathrop, which has the capacity to produce 10,000 Megapacks annually. Thanks to a highly automated assembly process that uses over 30 welding robots to assemble the core Megapack structure. This is the largest manufacturing fixture Tesla uses— likely to only be matched by future developments at Mega Shanghai.

Tesla uses a highly automated powder coating process, utilizing over 90 robotic paint atomizers to apply more than 140 pounds of powder coat to each Megapack. This process delivers Tesla’s signature white reflective finish, engineered for long-term durability and corrosion resistance that lasts up to 20 years, even in harsh coastal or high-heat environments.

All of Megapack’s power electronics are designed and built in-house. Each Megapack uses 24 battery modules, electrical busing, and thermal management systems to ensure grid reliability and help to maximize energy density. The architecture pairs each inverter with a battery module to maximize energy availability and overall uptime. Plus, before each Megapack ships its way across the world, Tesla performs rigorous on-site quality control to ensure that the installation process is as seamless as possible.

Watch Tesla’s video of the manufacturing process below:

Megapack’s Real-World Impact: Hawaii

The core purpose of Megapack is to make power grids more stable and resilient while also reducing reliance on dirty peak power plants like coal. They achieve this by balancing energy supply and demand in real-time, smoothing out fluctuations from variable renewable sources like solar and wind, which helps to prevent grid shortages.

Hawaii actually provides the most real and down-to-earth example of Megapack’s impact. In mid-2024, the Kapolei Energy Storage facility in Hawaii came online. Hawaii utilized 258 Megapacks with a combined capacity of 565 MWh, successfully replacing the state’s last coal-fired power plant. This single facility can power approximately 20% of Oahu’s peak electricity needs by itself for approximately 4 hours.

The project is more than just removing coal plants, though. It serves as an example of Megapack’s grid integration and grid forming technology. The Kapolei Energy Storage facility can manage grid fluctuations caused by weather changes impacting renewable energy, improving stability and preventing blackouts. Thanks to their rapid inverter response times of under a millisecond, Megapacks participate in complex grid balancing activities, including fast frequency and voltage support, which helps to maintain grid balance throughout the day. Beyond that, Kapolei also allows Hawaii to black-start the grid in case of a major power outage that takes out a large section of the grid.

This functionality would be especially useful in Spain, where black-starting the grid took over eight hours recently and is still disrupting the day-to-day life of people there.

You can check out Megapack’s real-world impact in this video from Tesla below:

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