A Tesla Cybertruck was pulled over while driving in Germany, a reminder that the vehicle is generally not legal on European roads.
The Tesla Cybertruck has attracted plenty of attention, mostly for its unconventional and polarizing look. For better or worse*, the car looks different than anything else on the road, and thus has been the target of all sorts of discussion (*it’s for worse).
But it’s not just the look of the car that’s unconventional. Because of that look, it also breaks several European rules, particularly those related to pedestrian protection (which was called out immediately upon reveal by many observers, including this author).
As a result, it does not have “type approval” in Germany. Even applications for individual exemptions have been denied because of the vehicle “deviates significantly” from requirements.
The vehicle is also too large. In general, a “class B” license, the normal license you get for driving a car, allows you to drive a vehicle up to 3,500kg (7,716lb). The Cybertruck does weigh less than this, but this number refers to the “Gross Vehicle Weight,” or the maximum weight of the truck when laden with occupants and cargo, for which all trims of the Cybertruck exceed 3,500kg.
A Swedish driver ran up against this barrier when driving through Bavaria, near the town of Vaterstatten, Merkur.de reports (with the funny title “Tesla monster truck stopped on A99”). The driver was holding a class B license, like most drivers, whereas the police said that a C1 license allowing operation of a vehicle up to 7.5 tons would be required.
The police did not allow the driver to continue on their journey. Vaterstatten is near the Southern border of Germany, so the Cybertruck might not have been on German roads for long… except the driver is Swedish, so if they drove all the way from Sweden, they would have spent quite a while on German roads before being stopped.
(Interestingly, in the police photo above, there are black bars all over the vehicle. Germany has strict privacy laws and hides personally identifiable information in public photos. That normally wouldn’t be the case with the hood of a car, but the Cybertruck in question is wrapped and seems to have several logos on it, which the German police had to cover up. Companies often use Cybertrucks for advertising, as they attract so much attention and are therefore used as rolling billboards)
We’ve seen similar situations before in Europe, with an imported Cybertruck being seized in the UK, someone trying to smuggle two through Lithuania into Russia, and with the US Army warning servicemembers that the Cybertruck is not allowed in Germany.
Nevertheless a few people still manage to get Cybertrucks onto European roads, by getting individual approval from one country or another, then driving across borders. But even in cases like that, a story like this shows that drivers could open themselves up to trouble by driving this unapproved vehicle on European roads.
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