A $140,000 Cybertruck Becomes the World’s Largest Remote Control Vehicle in Three Days

Prop Department set a simple goal for a recent build: take a full-size Tesla Cybertruck and turn it into something anyone could drive from a distance. There is no driver in the seat, and there are no complex software overrides of the truck’s own systems. Instead, there are motors, linkages, and painstaking wiring that allow someone outside the vehicle to handle the steering, throttle, transmission, and brakes. The project belonged to WhistlinDiesel, whose videos often end with expensive machinery in pieces, so the finished truck needed to work well enough for a high-speed run that might not go gently.

Three days passed, and that was all the calendar allowed, as the parts were fashioned from what was already in the shop rather than ordering new ones. To make more space, the front seats were pushed out. A special frame with laser-cut brackets was installed next, all screwed down tightly to ensure it stayed there even when things got bumpy. A stepper motor was mounted to the steering wheel using a previously constructed adapter flange that matched the Cybertruck’s column. That motor handled the left and right turns naturally. A couple of servo motors took care of the rest, with one kicking the accelerator pedal, another working the small fingers on the gear selector buttons, and a ground wire dealing with the capacitive sensors. Then there were the power supply, which used four different voltages to keep everything running. The stepper motor received 48 volts from the truck’s mid-voltage battery. Smaller transformers reduced the voltage to 24 volts for the servos, 12 volts for the relay bank, and 5 volts for the Arduino that controlled the display.

The brakes were a challenge to fix since a pneumatic cylinder kept the foot pushed down at all times, waiting for a remote signal to let it go again.Because the OEM air tank couldn’t stay charged for long, an air compressor had to ride shotgun in the backseat. Without the ‘dead-man’ setup, the truck might just continue rolling away when our signal failed. One final stumbling block remained: the cabin sensors, which were designed to identify a live human in the driver’s seat, would shift the truck into Park as soon as that seat was empty. The solution was to simply tear off the module, and the truck stopped insisting on a body in the wheelchair.

Now that the FPV camera was mounted on a strong bracket, the driver could see clearly via their goggles. In early tests, the remote signals got mixed up with a racing simulator’s motion platform and gyroscope, but screen slowness and HDMI peculiarities put the notion on hold for a later edition. Uncomplicated radio control worked flawlessly, with steering responding, throttle kicking in, gears shifting, and the emergency brake locking up just as instructed.

WhistlinDiesel drove the finished truck to a private race track. Full acceleration down the strip pushed the speedometer to 111 mph when the Cybertruck smashed into a motionless Ford F-150 parked broadside. The Ford’s cab was ripped completely off its frame in a firestorm. The Cybertruck crumpled violently in the front, yet remained intact and did not even light its battery pack. Both trucks were scrapped at the end of the day, but the remote system did exactly what it was supposed to do.