An American polishing company recently made headlines for giving a Tesla Cybertruck a mirror finish, and now it’s finished another one… and there are reportedly no laws prohibiting their use on US roads.
Experts told Business Insider it isn’t illegal to drive a vehicle with a mirror finish, like the Cybertrucks which have been heavily detailed by Joplin, Missouri-based The Polishing Guy.
However, there are concerns about just how distracting such vehicles can be.
“Reflective glare may pose the same problem for other drivers as headlight glare, but I am not aware of any research documenting whether this leads to or is associated with increased crash risk,” David Zuby, chief research officer for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), told Business Insider in an email.
Johnathon Ehsani, research director at Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, also warned of reflected glare, but said a crash is more likely for another reason.
“The far more plausible case is a crash mechanism that is far more common, that people crash from every single day,” he said, “and that’s that it might attract attention because it’s such an unusual-looking vehicle.”
As to why these Cybertruck drivers have chosen for their electric pickups to adopt this mirror finish, the owner of the first depply-polished example – Tyson Garvin – said he didn’t like the stock appearance.
“I didn’t like it when I first got it,” he said.
“It was actually very dirty when I picked it up. It was a very bad delivery experience. And just the look of it — the dull stainless steel isn’t evenly brushed.”
He also noted it doesn’t show fingerprints as easily as the regular finish, and gets shinier the more it’s cleaned.
Mr Garvin also said he got his wife to follow him in another vehicle to see if it would be dangerous on the road, but she confirmed that due to the angle of the tailgate, it was only reflecting the ground.
Already, The Polishing Guy, which specialises in semi-trucks, has received comments online from Cybertruck owners who want to follow suit and have a mirror finish applied.
All Cybertrucks roll off the factory line with stainless steel body panels, and Tesla offers only vinyl wraps for those seeking to give the silver-coloured vehicle a different shade.
There have been some very creative modifications to the electric pickup. For example, Zack Nelson of YouTube channel JerryRigEverything recently gold-plated a Cybertruck.
