A photograph of a giant and conspicuously triangle-shaped car in Munich, close to BMW’s Analysis and Innovation Middle, has surfaced on the web, suggesting the German automaker is doing a teardown of the newly-released Tesla Cybertruck.

Now that the Cybertruck is out, sightings aren’t all that unusual, particularly in California and Texas the place a lot of the autos are being delivered.

However one place that Cybertrucks nonetheless aren’t widespread is Europe, the place it isn’t bought (and it’s unlikely that the car will ever be bought attributable to its dimension and the probability that its excessive and boxy front-end wouldn’t move pedestrian security laws).

So think about the shock when a flatbed automotive transporter was noticed with a lined(-but-really-you-can-tell-what’s-under-there), triangle-shaped car in Munich, simply down the street from BMW.

The pictures have been posted by Nextmove, a German EV rental firm that additionally has an lively youtube channel posting details about EVs. Right here’s an embed of the video, deep-linked to the portion in query (pictures begin at 27:36):

The pictures have been despatched in by a viewer who says they have been taken on April 4 at round 7:45am on the nook of Schleichheimerstrasse and Frankfurter Ring, coming from the route of BMW’s Analysis and Innovation Middle. The placement is certainly only one block away from a number of BMW services, as you’ll be able to see on this map of the world:

Now perhaps that is all only a loopy coincidence, but it surely appears fairly possible that BMW purchased this truck, in all probability for teardown functions. Which is fascinating, on condition that BMW doesn’t make vehicles (although it does make SUVs).

However regardless of their lack of pickup vehicles, BMW might be nonetheless fascinated about seeing among the new applied sciences that Tesla is working with within the Cybertruck. Regardless of the car being a… let’s say “assertion,” it’s full of a superb quantity of tech that the automotive business has been speaking about for a very long time, however which heretofore has been seen in few or no completed autos.

This contains issues like 48-Volt structure and steer-by-wire, and another applied sciences which can be on some autos however nonetheless moderately new, like Tesla’s bigger 4680 cell format and Powershare bidirectional charging. Tesla additionally initially promised to make use of a distinctive “exoskeleton”-style chassis, although because the truck received nearer to manufacturing that seems to be prefer it didn’t fairly pan out the way in which we imagined – however we’re positive BMW is fascinated about seeing what’s beneath that pores and skin anyway.

This isn’t the primary time we’ve seen Cybertrucks within the possession of different automakers, and it is not uncommon for automakers to acquire new autos from different automakers to allow them to take them aside and see what the competitors is as much as.

Final month, a Cybertruck was noticed exterior Ford’s proving grounds in Detroit, and reportedly the automaker paid fairly a fairly penny for it. Early Cybertrucks bought for nearly 1 / 4 million {dollars} on the secondary market, regardless of Tesla’s risk to promote early patrons who flip their vehicles. Up to now, Tesla hasn’t adopted by on this risk with a lawsuit, but it surely has blacklisted at the least one proprietor after he listed his on the market, and as extra vehicles have gotten out, the resale market has cooled from its preliminary excessive highs.

However then, even that quarter million quantity could possibly be low in comparison with what BMW may need paid. In February, a Cybertruck was listed on the secondhand market in Germany for a cool €485k, so both a wealthy fanatic wantsa triangle to embellish their storage, or a wealthy German automaker needed to be the primary to test it out. We hope they realized quite a bit for that sort of cash.