Lifestyle
Tesla Cybertruck Interior: How the design has changed in the past four years
It is no secret that since the November 2019 unveiling of the Tesla Cybertruck, a lot has changed. From the size of the initial build that made it on stage in Hawthorne, California, to the various configurations that were once planned to be offered, there is one thing that has changed drastically: the interior, which has been overhauled since its early designs for more space and functionality, rather than to seat an additional person.
Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen has called the Cybertruck a vehicle that the automaker will likely never have a “pencils down” approach for. This mentality, in particular, has culminated in years of modifications, changes, and redesigns to the body, interior, and even the powertrains for the upcoming all-electric pickup.
How has the interior changed? It is easier to tell you what has not changed, but it is more entertaining to compare the early builds of the Cybertruck to what is being seen as of this past weekend, as it is likely the recent sightings will be much closer to the actual product that is delivered to customers, which could be within the next 2 or 3 months, according to CEO Elon Musk.
Let’s take a look at the initially-displayed interior that Tesla unveiled for the Cybertruck in 2019.
(Credit: Tesla)
Looking at this press image that Tesla released around the time of the Cybertruck unveiling, we can notice several things:
- Yoke Steering
- Three front-row seats
- Marble dash that is made from recycled paper materials
All of these things have been changed, modified, or taken out of the vehicle in the past three-and-a-half years.
Yoke Steering
The initial Yoke Steering Wheel was exactly that: a Yoke. Tesla first adapted Yoke Steering on the Model S and Model X Plaid. It was a polarizing design that was loved by some and hated by others, but the Cybertruck was technically the first vehicle to really feature the design in Tesla’s lineup, as these images came before the release of the Plaid vehicles.
However, recent designs have shown that Tesla will instead adopt what looks like a hybrid of the two, featuring an enclosed top portion, but it still had a compact design that is similar to the yoke in terms of size.
We saw this for the first time at Investor Day in March.
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Tesla cybertruck with more “round” steering yoke. pic.twitter.com/wspu40VpO3
— Sofiaan Fraval (@Sofiaan) March 1, 2023
This has seemingly been fitted on numerous Cybertruck builds as of late, as sightings of the truck during this past weekend’s appearance at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles have the same “closed” Yoke design that is seemingly a mix of that and the regular round design.
Credit: Greggertruck | Twitter
Front Row Seating Changes
Initial iterations of the Cybertruck showed a three-seat front row, with the middle seat being a fold-down as large pickup trucks on the market currently have.
“Bench seats,” as they are commonly referred to, offer versatility for an additional passenger. They can also fold down and present a center console for storage, cup holders, and an arm rest.
However, as seen above, it appears Tesla will not equip bench seats in the Cybertruck like it planned to early on. This is instead going to be a permanent center console. This may have been a result of the smaller dimensions of the vehicle, which the automaker revised in an attempt to make it fit in regular parking spots and Boring Company tunnels.
Credit: Greggertruck | Twitter
Marble Dash
We reported just after the Cybertruck unveiling that Tesla would use recycled paper composite materials that create a durable and sustainable dash that looked clean and contributed to the vehicle’s eco-friendly nature.
Tesla Cybertruck’s ‘marble’ dashboard is actually made from paper and it’s genius
The initial design of this was extensive, as the early images show the marble dash extending back toward the windshield considerably. Tesla still has the marble dash design in the newest Cybertruck designs, but it is considerably different than before.
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It has been scaled back considerably as the vehicle has progressed through design changes.
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Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
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Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
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It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
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