Featured image: Tesla

Cybertruck has long been the subject of adoration for millions of people. Some lucky ones have already made an order, others are only thinking about it, while for now, someone can only dream of it. This steel beast is such a universal vehicle that will suit many people that its competitors are far behind and do not even show signs of life at the moment.

All Tesla cars make a great contribution to protecting our planet from CO2, in that they are electric vehicles and do not use combustible fuel to power their engines. But have you ever wondered how eco-friendly Cybertruck is? I bet that you can’t even imagine the scale of its environmental friendliness.

Although electrification is a powerful tool to reduce CO2 emissions, it is not the ultimate step towards decarburizing the automotive industry.

Cybertruck is an excellent opportunity for Tesla to eliminate residual emissions from automobile production. The company is well aware of the problem, and this is one of the reasons why it has gone to great lengths to power its Gigafactory through renewable energy sources.

Source: @jonsibal / Twitter

Levi Tillemann draws attention to the fact that if people are going to save their cars, as well as a survivable climate, industrial emissions should fall sharply. The most obvious way to achieve this is to create cars that will be part of the so-called circular economy when products are reused and recycled rather than discarded. This concept is called the circular car.

The Cybertruck’s raw, rugged design could be perfectly suited for efficient reuse. The same elements that will make it cheap to manufacture could also make it easy to take apart at the end of its life.

Batteries can be transitioned into second-life applications. As renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy continue to fall in price and make up a large share of global energy consumption, used car batteries can play an important role in keeping the lights on. And the sale of this expensive battery will help owners of electric vehicles to recoup some of their investments.

Properly designed, many components can be reused after inspection and possibly some repair. Other elements can be recycled into automotive components again. This would be a big improvement in the modern system.

When most cars are taken to a junkyard today, they are crushed and shredded. That process contaminates high-quality steel with copper and other elements—which means it can only be reprocessed into lower-quality steels. From the Cybertruck, which is made of steel, you can remove the battery, disassemble the insides and send the shell back to the oven. Thus, most of the car could be recycled. Tesla can create relatively clean flows of materials of uniform quality, ideal for processing.

Source: Tesla

All this indicates a car, which is not only better from an environmental point of view, but is also a more profitable long-term investment than modern cars, because it has more useful properties at the end of its service life.

Tillemann consulted with Fehmi Yuksel, who helped lead McKinsey’s analysis on circularity, about her attitude to Cybertruck's sustainability. “Could a circular Cybertruck be even more environmentally conscious? Sure...But by running it on clean energy, recycling materials at end of life, and doing things like eliminating paint (a surprisingly large source of emissions), the Cybertruck could end up 4X more efficient than its pickup truck peers — even more efficient than a lightweight Japanese hybrid.”

The author sees that the pickup truck was made by Musk, given this moment. Cybertruck is made from the same stainless steel as SpaceX's Starship.

Critics said the choice of this material is illogical, but Musk cited several good reasons why it made sense:

• cost
• excellent thermal properties, and
• recyclability.

When Starship lands humans “on Mars, you can cut that up, you can weld it, you can modify it. No problem...That’s like, for sure, a great thing...honestly, I’m in love with steel,” Musk mused at the Starship launch event.

Well, for now, it's clear that Cybertruck is incredibly "Green".