Tesla Cybertruck seals its 123 kWh battery during river crossings using the air suspension tank

The Cybertruck can “wade” in water (image: Tesla)

The Cybertruck may not be able to swim in the sea when the seas are “not too choppy” just yet, but it has a cool Wade mode that lets it cross rivers and streams. Tesla has found an ingenious way to seal the battery pack for the purpose.

Last September, Elon Musk amused Tesla fans and foes alike by claiming that the Cybertruck “will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy” in order to make it “from Starbase to South Padre Island, which requires crossing the channel.”

Tesla’s engineers obviously dissuaded him from making the Cybertruck amphibian as it was already getting 3 years behind schedule, but Tesla’s component naming scheme now reveals that this has been an option at some point.

Cybertruck Wade mode water crossing tech

For starters, there are Cybertruck Wade, Baja, and Overland driving modes that each employ a different set of air suspension and other adjustments to prepare the truck for the off-road task at hand. When the custom Wade mode is picked from the central console display, the UI says that Tesla’s electric pickup then “raises ride height and pressurizes battery when driving through water.”

That is all explicable, since the 14-inch suspension travel would make crossing shallow rivers and streams a breeze with the Cybertruck. The pesky question of water getting to the battery elements and short-circuiting them remains, however, so Tesla apparently thought of pressurizing it to ward off water ingress. How?

The Cybertruck parts catalog is the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to revealing Tesla’s engineering secrets and component prices. After learning that a fender bender would cost only $550 for the stainless steel body part, while a replacement 4-foot wiper assembly is $165, it now discloses how exactly Tesla “pressurizes” the battery in Wade mode.

In the parts catalog, there is an entry called “Scuba Pack Airline,” apparently a remnant of Elon Musk’s amphibious Cybertruck dreams, which goes from the air tank to the battery pack. In addition, a “scuba valve block assembly” lets compressed air in the line to increase outward pressure and prevent water from entering the 123 kWh battery pack during river crossings and the like, adding to the off-road street cred of Tesla’s first electric pickup.

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The Scuba assembly mainlines compressed air to the battery pack in Wade mode (image: Tesla)

Daniel Zlatev – Senior Tech Writer – 991 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2021

Wooed by tech since the industrial espionage of Apple computers and the times of pixelized Nintendos, Daniel went and opened a gaming club when personal computers and consoles were still an expensive rarity. Nowadays, fascination is not with specs and speed but rather the lifestyle that computers in our pocket, house, and car have shoehorned us in, from the infinite scroll and the privacy hazards to authenticating every bit and move of our existence.

Daniel Zlatev, 2023-12-15 (Update: 2023-12-15)

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