Police seize Tesla Cybertruck near Manchester: why importing one to the UK is more difficult than you’d think

There aren’t many cars which have caused as much hype as the Tesla Cybertruck, and there are a lot of Tesla fans who were disappointed to learn it wasn’t going to come to the UK.

This hasn’t stopped one person in Bury, near Manchester, from shipping this rolling axe head to our shores. Cruising around in a truck as distinctive as the Cybertruck was always bound to draw attention, and it also caught the eye of a passing police officer.

The Tesla in question was being driven by a permanent UK resident, but the vehicle was registered and insured overseas which is prohibited in the UK, and the Cybertruck isn’t road legal over here either because it doesn’t have what’s called a certificate of conformity.

This is a document which confirms whether a car meets a range of standards for safety, emissions, size and mass, among other things. Greater Manchester Police have seized this Cybertruck under Section 165 of the Road Traffic Act, which gives officers the power to take your car off you if you can’t prove that it’s not being driven illegally.

The driver will have a tough time getting their beloved Cybertruck back as well. A Greater Manchester Police spokesperson told Carwow: “the owner will have to prove ownership and correct insurance prior to release which he will likely struggle with.”

The force also spoke of safety concerns in a Facebook post about the traffic stop: “While this may seem trivial to some, legitimate concerns exist around the safety of other road users or pedestrians if they were involved in a collision with a Cybertruck.”

You may be wondering if there’s any way to make a Cybertruck legal for use on UK roads, well YouTuber Yianni Charalambous, known online as Yiannimize, is pulling out all the stops to get UK number plates on his Tesla.

He added orange indicators, blanked off the orange side markers required by US law and covered the truck in rubber strips to hide some of the sharp edges. There’s still more work to do though.

The brick-like front end and hardened stainless steel bodywork won’t be too kind on pedestrians or other cars in the event of an accident, so we’ll have to wait and see if Yianni can find a way around this. Until then, it might be better to consider other electric cars if you’re living in the UK.

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