That viral video of a ‘deactivated’ Tesla Cybertruck is a fake

Did Tesla remotely deactivate a Cybertruck in the middle of a highway because the owner featured it in an unauthorized music video? The story already seemed highly unlikely, and on Monday afternoon, Tesla tweeted about the video, saying, “This is fake – that’s not our screen. Tesla does NOT disable vehicles remotely.”

On Sunday, Instagram user @bighuey313 posted a video of his supposed deactivated Cybertruck, complete with a flashing red warning message on the truck’s main touchscreen. “Dog wtf my cybertruck just shut off on the freeway! 😡” he wrote in the caption. “Almost just crashed wtf @teslamotors.”

The owner also posted an image of what he claimed was a cease-and-desist letter from Tesla’s vice president of legal affairs, Dinna Eskin. The letter cites “unauthorized use of Tesla’s intellectual property in musical content distributed under your name.”

The video quickly went viral on BlueSky, where anti-Elon Musk sentiment has helped fuel nationwide protests against Tesla. But users quickly noticed a number of discrepancies, such as the fact that the letter opens “We represent Tesla” despite being signed by the company’s in-house counsel. The letter also uses Eskin’s old title, “Sr. Director and Deputy General Counsel,” despite her current title of VP. And the warning message isn’t formatted like Tesla’s typical in-vehicle alerts and notifications. An X user speculated that the flashing red title was likely just a YouTube video playing on fullscreen to simulate a legitimate error.

Despite these issues, the video went viral on BlueSky, X, and Reddit — and likely will continue to travel far and wide, confirming many people’s prior opinions about Tesla and Elon Musk.

Update August 11th: Tesla posted on X confirming the video is fake.