A company is offering to up-armor Cybertrucks and Chechnya's dictator rolled a machine-gun armed Cybertruck through the streets of his country's capital.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the brutal dictator of Chechnya and prominent Putin ally, has invited Elon Musk to visit him in Grozny. Kadyrov wrote the invitation in a Telegram post where he praised the Cybertruck below a video of him driving the stainless steel monstrosity around Chechen city streets.

Kadyrov smiled like a child while driving the Cybertruck. “We received a Tesla Cybertruck from the respected Elon Musk,” the post said. “I was pleased to test the new technology and was personally convinced that it is called the ‘Cyberbeast’. A real invulnerable and fast animal.”

The bed of the Cybertruck was open and someone had mounted a Russian PK machine gun in the bed. Kadyrov said the car was a dream to drive and that they may soon send it to his soldiers. “I express my sincere gratitude to Elon Musk! He is, of course, the strongest genius of our time…a great man!” He said on Telegram.

  • @[email protected]English
    99•3 months ago

    The richest asshole in the world tweeted:

    Are you seriously so retarded that you think I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general?

    🧐

    That choice of word is weird. Did he mean that he sold the cybertruck to the Chechen war criminal?

    Btw, dear war criminal, hurry up and go to do the “special military operation” with that death trap

    • mozz
      37•3 months ago

      Do you seriously think I am so retarded that I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general?

      FTFE

      And the answer of course is yes

    • @[email protected]English
      9•3 months ago

      I mean, a person with a mental disability probably won’t do something like this. A narcissistic billionaire who strongly overestimates his cognitive abilities on the other hand absolutely would.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•3 months ago

        Like “do you think I’m that stupid to give away $100k?? Of course he paid, and of course he paid an extra fee”

  • @[email protected]English
    82•3 months ago

    To be fair, Tesla autopilot does a decent job killing people in civilian applications so this feels like a natural move.

  • str82L English
    70•3 months ago

    Well isn’t he going to be surprised when he finds out just how ineffective it is against gunfire.

      • @[email protected]English
        20•3 months ago

        I mean…that wasn’t a baseball. It was a steel ball.

        That said, it’s a stupid vehicle that is stupidly designed.

      • @[email protected]English
        7•3 months ago

        Per the Tesla patent, they took the approach of laminating dissimilarly toughened layers with a special adhesive. Unlike actual ballistic glass using a polycarbonate/polymer layer in the stack, Tesla’s 100% glass and glue is just better than tempered:

        …at most a 10% chance of failure with an impact of 2 J.

        However this glass type is rejected on the side and rear windows by everyone else, because it slows emergency rescue efforts - laminated windshield glass is difficult enough when no other rescue path is available.

  • @[email protected]English
    35•3 months ago

    I’m in favor of dictators worldwide standardizing on the cybertruck thanks. It’ll be easy to disable all of them with a garden hose or a baseball.

  • BoneEnglish
    24•3 months ago

    The Cybertruck being used to quash freedom. Musk would have been Hitler’s right hand man.

    • @[email protected]English
      28•3 months ago

      The Henry Ford of our time (except for Elon not having the mechanical skills I guess). Musk probably would take that as a compliment, but I mean it as an insult

      • @[email protected]English
        3•3 months ago

        Was Henry Ford technical? I always thought he was, but now that I am older and our current “mavericks” are paper tigers, I wonder how much cult of personality colored our history books.

        • andrew_bidlawEnglish
          6•3 months ago

          From what I’ve read and watched about the man, he’s not known for being an engineer, but the manager who streamlined the production and made sure his factory produced every part for his vehicles, so he isn’t dependent on suppliers and contractors, and could stamp them as fast as it was humanly possible at the time. With Musk, well, I’m not sure he is even involved enough to know what corners he can safely cut except for safety regulations and QA.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•3 months ago

          Ford at least started the company he’s known for, whereas Elon took Tesla over and unceremoniously squeezed out the two actual founders.

  • @[email protected]English
    16•3 months ago

    Kadyrov’s goons have an image of being fearsome warriors, but their main talent is maintaining this carefully manicured image. Other than killing/torturing defenceless civilians and prisoners, they stay well away from the actual fighting and take selfies looking fierce with their shiny new not-at-all-battleworn equipment, to the point that people refer to them as the Instagram Corps. His glee at receiving this defective mall-ninja cosplay prop that barely copes with paved roads is on brand with this. If they keep it safely away from the front and have squads of conscripts keeping mud and bugs out of its moving parts, they can take turns scowling menacingly behind the machine gun like Immortan Joe’s War Boys, and if they persuade Putin of the propaganda value of the footage, it may save them from going to the front. At least until a Ukrainian drone finds their toy and torches it. If they make the mistake of riding their new steed into battle, they’re effectively dead meat.

  • @[email protected]English
    14•3 months ago

    Cannae fuckin wait for some despot to beef it because the cybertruck somehow killed them.