It’s always important for automakers to keep an eye on the competition. Many employees have the opportunity to try out models from competing brands, discreetly purchased or rented.
It also happens that these cars are dissected down to the last bolt, so that a manufacturer’s engineers can better understand the latest technological choices of their competitors. A practice called reverse engineeringor reverse engineering in French.
We remember in particular the incredible story of a Tesla Model Spiegel. Problem is, the car had been rented to individuals via Sixt, and neither the owners nor the rental agency had been informed of the purpose of this rental.
A Cybertruck seen near the BMW R&D center
Although the Tesla Cybertruck is not marketed in Europe, a copy covered on a flatbed truck, revealing its unique lines, was seen by a viewer of the nextnews show, broadcast on YouTube by the car rental agency German nextmove electrics. The author of the photos says he crossed paths with the machine on April 4, 2024 around 7:45 a.m., at the corner of Schleißheimer Street and the Frankfurter Ring, in Munich, coming from the BMW research and innovation center .
The pictures actually match, and the place is surrounded by BMW Group facilities. The presence of a Cybertruck in this location is therefore probably not due to chance, the group very well having been able to import a copy to its German stronghold. A long time ago, General Motors, for example, imported the Elect’Road electric range extender version of our national Renault Kangoo, in order to develop a similar, but much more modern, solution to power its Chevrolet/Holden Volt and Opel/Vauxhall Ampera, then the Cadillac ELR.
However, this in no way means that BMW would like to compete with Tesla’s gigantic electric pickup. However, we imagine that the model is full of points to analyze for the engineers of the BMW group, as its design is unique in the automotive sphere.
In the United States, a copy of the Tesla Cybertruck was also seen on a Ford testing ground in Detroit.