The owner of the Tesla Cybertruck that was seized by the UK police in Manchester woke up today to both good and bad news.
The good news is the police gave him the truck back.
The bad news is they told him there’s a catch.
And it’s a massive catch.
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What happened with the first Cybertruck in the UK
Yianni Charalambous, founder of Yiannimize and owner of the YouTube channel by the same name, was one of the first people to import a Tesla Cybertruck into the UK and he bought it from a man named Alban, who owns a few Cybertrucks in the UK.
A while back, one of Alban’s Cybertrucks was seized by the police in Manchester and the reason was completely unexpected.
Yianni documented the whole thing on his YouTube channel and found out the real problem with the truck was its steer-by-wire system.
For reference, steer-by-wire means the steering wheel is not physically connected to the wheels, just digitally.
This happened in February and even though the truck was returned to Alban in April 2025, he won’t be able to drive it.
This is the massive catch in question, because the police told him in no uncertain terms he simply cannot drive this vehicle on UK roads.
It feels like having your meal served to you and then being told you can’t eat it.
Why you can’t buy Cybertrucks in Europe
Elon Musk has previously hinted that a Europe-friendly version could be on the cards.
But, as things stand, Tesla’s Cybertruck isn’t street-legal in Europe for a very long list of reasons.
Apart from the steer-by-wire thing, the truck has a lot sharp angles that can’t meet the EU and UK pedestrian safety requirements.
Aside from that, there are also a lot of seemingly minor issues that turn into a huge problem if you add them all together.
For example, the Cybertruck would need different rear indicators, along with different brake and indicator lights.
But the list is a lot longer than that.
And, as demonstrated by Yianni and Alban, even if you take care of all of that, it might not be enough.
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