How Practical Is Tesla’s Cybertruck in the UK?
By: Lewis Gavin
Tags: Technology, Tech, UK, Tesla, Cars

With deliveries in the States poised for late 2021 and reservations being possible here in the UK too, I was curious whether the dimensions of the Cybertruck would be practical in day to day life here in the UK.

As you may be aware, here in the UK our roads tend to be narrower especially within city centres and the number of people with trucks is significantly lower than in the US.

So how well will Cybertruck do here in the UK given our lack of thirst for trucks and our narrower streets?

Driving A Cybertruck

Most roads in the UK are plenty wide enough for the Cybertruck in everyday use. The size of the car was talked about a lot when the car was first announced, especially with it coming to Europe. Here in the UK most of our roads are wide enough, although some country lanes can get quite narrow. Considering many of these country lanes lead to farms with tractors using these roads, it’s safe to say the Cybertruck should be fine.

Narrow UK roads (image source)

In busy cities like London, roads can become narrower due to on-street parking and roads being congested with other cars. However, most routes through London are accessible by buses and therefore again, the Cybertruck should have no problem. It may be a tight squeeze on certain narrow or busy roads but nothing that would cause issues.

Certain roads in the UK have a maximum width restriction. This restriction is normally around 6 foot 6 inches (about 2 meters) so the Cybertruck should avoid these roads and find an alternative route. However, there are many SUV style cars on UK roads today that would also have this problem including the Land Rover Discovery Sport and even the Tesla Model S and we see plenty of these cars on UK roads.

In most day to day use, I can’t see the Cybertruck having a problem, especially seeing as we already have cars around the 2-meter wide mark on roads today.

Parking A Cybertruck

The dimensions of the Cybertruck are 5.8 meters long, just over 2 meters wide and 1.9 meters high. How do the average garage and parking space sizes in the UK compare?

Parking in a Garage

Garages in the UK aren’t used as much for parking cars, they’re often used as rooms for extra storage. This is mainly because the average size of single garages in the UK is fairly small. Door sizes tend to be around 2.2 meters wide with the overall garage being about 3 meters wide. This is a tight squeeze for most cars, even the Model 3 is 1.85 meters wide leaving only 35 cm of clearance through an average UK garage door.

Average garage door size UK (image source)

Looking lengthways isn't much of an improvement either with the average UK garage being 6 meters long, even double garages share this same average length. Again, these leaves very little clearance for the Cybertruck with its 5.8 meter length.

Parking in a Parking Lot

“The average UK parking bay size is 2.4m wide by 4.8m long”. This is for off-street parking spaces like actual car parks. From this, we can see that the Cybertruck will fit widthways, although it leaves it only 20 centimetres either side for opening the doors.

Lengthways though, the Cybertruck will definitely be overhanging which in a tight parking lot could cause some annoyance to other drivers and obviously increases the chance of it getting clipped by another car.

The Cybertruck isn’t alone here though. There aren’t many trucks in the UK but our most popular is the Ford Ranger with a length of 5.35 meters. The Mitsubishi L200 is also popular and has a length of 5.3 meters.

It seems UK parking spaces aren’t growing with the size of our cars and drivers of these trucks will already be experiencing “the overhang”. However, the Cybertruck is a further 8% longer than the Ford Ranger extending this problem even further.