How a Ford dealership saved me from a charging disaster my first time driving a Tesla Cybertruck

• Tesla EVs come with an adapter to charge at non-Tesla chargers. 
• But that adapter doesn’t work with the Cybertruck, Tesla says. 
• This design flaw almost stranded me — until a Ford dealership came to the rescue. 

When I got behind the wheel of my 3-day rental earlier this month, I knew driving the Tesla Cybertruck would be unlike any other driving experience.

What I didn’t expect was for the attention-grabbing truck to also give me a headache when I tried to juice up. After all, it’s Tesla’s newest product, the company’s superchargers are seemingly everywhere, and EV charging is slowly improving across the board.

Boy, was I wrong.

In all of my naivety (despite editing articles every single week about electric cars and their associated infrastructure challenges), I thought the reporting trip would be a breeze. I would pick up the vehicle, test it out, charge it overnight, stop quickly at a Supercharger on the way to return it, and be on my way.

Not so fast.

Here’s where my assumptions went astray, thanks to some design oversight from Tesla and a lack of contingency planning on my part: