Save If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED Car customizer to the stars Yianni Charalambous, owner of luxury vehicle wrapping workshops in England, is aiming to legalize a Tesla Cybertruck for driving in the UK. If successful, this would be the first Cybertruck allowed on British roads, and would join the rubberized Cybertruck legalized for use on Czech roads through the fitting of skinny bumpers over the electric pickup’s sharp edges. To the dismay of road safety organizations, the minimally altered Czech Cybertruck passed an individual vehicle approval (IVA) test, one of the ways to legalize low-volume imported cars in the EU. US automotive design standards are lax compared to those of Europe, where manufacturers must meet tough safety-first rules before mass-market “type approved” cars can be registered for use on public roads. Despite Brexit, the UK still follows European type-approval motoring standards for mass-market cars, as well as adhering to IVA rules for exotic imports. Even though it helped design them, the UK is not yet signed up to the EU’s vehicle safety measures contained in the two-year-old General and Pedestrian Safety Regulations (GSR). From July this year, all new cars in the EU must be fitted with automated emergency braking systems, intelligent speed assistance, and other GSR-compliant safety technologies. A long-existing EU-wide pedestrian-safety directive that the UK does follow prevents the sale of passenger vehicles that “exhibit sharp external projections.” Elon Musk’s edgy-in-more-ways-than-one stainless steel pickup therefore can’t be sold in Europe or the UK, a snafu recognized by Tesla’s VP of vehicle engineering Lars Maravy who last year told TopGear.nl that the Cybertruck falls foul of the European regulations requiring a rounding of 3.2 millimeters on protruding parts. “It is impossible,” he said, referring to the Cybertruck’s sharp paneling, “to make a rounding of 3.2 millimeters on a 1.4-millimeter sheet of stainless steel.” European safety standards also state that, to prevent causing injury to those outside cars, the front end of a passenger motor vehicle can’t be angular. The Cybertruck is almost nothing but angles. Yianni Charalambous has already started pimping his Cybertruck, despite it not being legal on British roads. Courtesy of Yianni Charalambous Simon Hill “The Cybertruck’s weight, stiff structure, and sharp design have raised valid concerns,” she tells WIRED. “Any loophole allowing these vehicles onto [UK] streets needs to be quickly closed.” “It would be hugely disappointing if a backdoor were to be opened which allowed vehicles bringing an increased risk of harm to UK streets and roads,” agrees Margaret Winchcomb, deputy executive director of PACTS, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, an expert body for more than 100 UK transport organizations. “Allowing vehicles for which the safety of others appears to be an afterthought would be a large step backward,” she adds. Although Tesla has made bold safety claims about the Cybertruck and released its own crash-test-dummy footage, no independent bodies have crash-tested the vehicle. US regulators rely on auto makers to self-test and certify their adherence to safety norms. The federal National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the insurance industry-backed Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) carry out crash tests on only some vehicles. The expense is too great for these organizations to test all vehicles, so choices are made based on sales volumes. “While [the Cybertruck] has created a lot of buzz, it’s unlikely we would invest resources to test it unless it were selling in numbers comparable with other popular large pickups,” says IIHS media director Joe Young. “Without testing the Cybertruck, I can’t comment on the effectiveness of its crumple zones,” he stresses. “For now, our concerns around its design are limited to the issues we’ve raised with other EVs. It’s very heavy, and it’s very quick.” Because of what it calls the Cybertruck’s “unusual design,” the UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) tells WIRED that it “would not like to predict” whether the pickup would get a DfT-administered IVA pass. “The IVA scheme was designed for [small- and medium-sized businesses] involved in specialist vehicle conversion or importation,” continues the statement to WIRED, “and was created long before the Cybertruck was conceived.” Extrapolating from the DfT’s carefully calibrated comments, Charalambous might be wasting his time and money trying to pass the IVA test. “The vehicle has advanced technology which may not be designed to meet the rules that apply in the UK,” warns the DfT statement. In his videos, Charalambous drives through southeast England in his Albanian-plated Cybertruck. If he’s caught doing this by a knowledgeable police officer, Charalambous could be fined. “A UK resident cannot drive a vehicle displaying foreign number plates in the UK,” confirmed the DfT statement, saying that an “imported car must not be driven on foreign number plates by a UK resident, except to and from [an annual safety check and a] pre-booked IVA [appointment].” In his third video, Charalambous said he was legally allowed to drive his Cybertruck in the UK because the Albanian seller had provided him with a green card, an international certificate of insurance issued in Albania. Again, this is a no-no says the DfT: “Driving an unregistered vehicle would render any insurance invalid.” Only time—and a lot of money—will determine whether Charalambous succeeds at legalizing his UK-based Cybertruck, but the odds are against it.