Lifestyle
This Tesla Cybertruck replica is far from ordinary for all the best reasons
When Tom Burick, a teacher at PS Academy in Gilbert, Arizona, told his students they had four weeks to build something that would normally take six months, they did not shy away. In fact, they embraced the challenge and wanted to show their resilience, and what they said eventually became the project’s theme: “We’re up for it!”
Tom gathered 70 of his engineers, who are students living with autism, and prepared them for the task of building a Tesla Cybertruck replica that was fully functional, but he made them aware of the test. While the project was originally slated to be completed in six months, Tom made his students aware that they would instead have just 28 days to get it done.
“We wanted to put our abilities to the test,” one of the students said.
It all started with an idea and a choice: What vehicle would be the perfect design to enter into their booth at the Concours in the Hills car show on February 4th?
“We were looking for a vehicle that was cool, fun, and exciting,” Burick told Teslarati. “There is so much hype around the Cybertruck, we thought it would be a good vehicle to build. We didn’t want to build something normal like a Corolla,” he said with a laugh.
Then it came down to execution. Working after school in the evenings, on the weekends, and whenever there was time, Burick and his team of engineers sought after a single goal: one truck and four weeks.
They started with what they call Pink Panther foam. It is a type of foam insulation ideal for crafts because it is rigid and stable, and it allowed PS Academy students to set up the chassis of the Cybertruck without worrying too much about its strength.
After the foam, the Cybertruck frame was covered in canvas drop cloth and painted with grey, water-based paint. They added some windows, then it was on to the motor, electronics, drivetrain, and more.
This Cybertruck replica utilizes lithium-iron batteries, which research by Burick and his team of engineers concluded were better for this application. They added two 12-volt motors, one to each rear wheel, and a normal motor speed controller from Amazon that is used as the accelerator. However, the students’ favorite feature does not have to do with its performance but with entertainment.
“Their favorite feature is the 400-watt audio system. It shakes the windows, and that has been their favorite feature by far,” Burick said.
Burick said that the students received help from a few local businesses and organizations that truly assisted in meeting the strict timeframe. Not only did PS Academy receive some love from the Tesla Driver’s Club Scottsdale, but Bespoke EVs helped with an initial $200 donation to get the project off-and-running, while AZ Metals, located in Mesa, Arizona, helped weld the steering system by shutting down their entire operation and taking an afternoon to assist with the project.
“If it wasn’t for them, I don’t think we would have made the show.”
A Deadline Met
PS Academy Arizona made it to the February 4th show at the Concours in the Hills car show, and over 1,000 cars, including plenty of Teslas were on display.
50,000 people attended the event, and over $430,000 in donations were received for Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
The appearances continued, with the most recent coming during Super Bowl weekend when the Cybertruck made it to the Rock-n-Roll Car Show at the Pavillions at Talking Stick.
“More people gravitated toward our makeshift Cybertruck than toward the $100,000 Teslas, and that meant a lot to us,” Burick said. “It is a testament to the creativity and hard work the students have displayed.
Far from Finished
Despite the truck making it to a few events, raising awareness for a great cause, and displaying the tremendous work ethic that the students living with autism showed, the work is far from over, Burick said.
“We’re just getting started, this is the launching point for even bigger things.”
Eventually, the team will add a rolling tech platform, adding more electronics, headlights, taillights, driving lights, a center-dash screen just like the actual Cybertruck will have, more motors, tinting, and other features.
“We want to get the vehicle out in the community,” Burick added. “We want to build a float and have the Cybertruck tow it. We’d love to have it on display in some of the local parades.”
All in all, Burick is incredibly proud of his students, who showed their resilience, creativity, and hard work.
I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.
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Investor's Corner
Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada
Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.
Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.
EXCLUSIVE: Tesla has just officially received approval for its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada, clearing the way for Tesla to launch a paid public Robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
This officially allows @Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis over the next… pic.twitter.com/DPs5UtUlrE
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 20, 2026
That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.
Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.
Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.
The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.
Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.
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India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor
Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”
The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”
We took a ride on a robotaxi on the Suntrax course and it successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.
Impressive! https://t.co/FVAkzFLz3r
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 11, 2026
DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.
SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.
Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.
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