While it may look like the bare stainless steel finish of the Tesla Cybertruck will get really hot if left in the sun, it apparently isn’t any worse than regular painted cars. In fact, according to one Cybertruck owner who measured the temperature of several cars parked out in the sun, it’s even cooler than a white car.
Based on the images posted by Cybertruck Owners Club forum member Stuck4ger, who measured the temperature of several parked cars, including a Tesla Cybertruck, using an infrared temperature sensor. He pointed the temperature measuring device at the hot side of black, white, and Midnight Silver Metallic Teslas parked in the same location, and the readout indicated that the unpainted Cybertruck was supposedly the coolest.
The Cybertruck had a body temperature of 106.1°F, while the white car was marginally hotter at 107.3°F. This seems a bit counterintuitive given that white cars are known to be the best at reflecting light and heat and staying cool, while darker colors absorb heat and feel hotter to the touch.
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Stainless Steel is a shade of gray
A lot can be said about the Tesla Cybertruck's stainless steel finish, but it won't get any hotter than a painted gray car left out in the sun.
The dark silver Tesla was considerably hotter than the white car or the Cybertruck, with a recorded body temperature of 140°F, which rose to 144.6°F for the black car. These findings are predictable, but there’s something not quite right about the white car being cooler than the truck.
Stuck4ger noted in his forum post that when he touched the Cybertruck’s body, it felt hot, but when he touched the black car, it felt even hotter. He doesn’t mention also touching the white car, but we suspect it would have felt colder than the Cyberturck and that the temperature sensor gave an incorrect reading.
If you’ve ever used one of those off-the-shelf infrared temperature sensors in your kitchen to measure water boiling in a stainless steel pot, then you know it doesn’t always yield a correct result. That's due to the reflective nature of the material. The one I have at home once suggested that a pot of almost boiling water was cold enough to touch.
One example of bare steel getting hot after being out in the sun is one of those old slides that you always burned your legs on as a child—stainless steel can definitely get hot after hours of exposure to bright sunlight. However, had the same slide been painted black, it would have been even hotter than just bare metal, although not by a significant margin.
We believe the result showing the Cybertruck, which we recently reviewed, was cooler than the white car is incorrect. At the same time, fears that the Cybertruck gets “dangerously hot” when left out in the sun should be unfounded, since it probably gets about as hot as any vehicle painted a similar shade of gray, and which is similarly reflective.
Let us know in the comments what your experience is with Cybertrucks left out in the sun for many hours and whether you felt like they were hotter than any other car—you should also feel the extra heat inside the cabin when you climb aboard.
