A Dealer Sold a Cybertruck to Shaq Falsely Claiming He Has “a Bigger Version of the Tesla Cybertruck Called the Cyberbeast”

Former NBA star Shaquille Oneal’s story about buying a Cybertruck shows why it’s hard to trust dealerships. The dealer convinced 7-foot-1 Shaq that he was purchasing a bigger version of the Cybertruck called the Cyberbeast.

Early on in the company’s history, Tesla eschewed the dealership network and trailblazed what was, for its time, a revolutionary, straight-to-customer online sales model.

Tesla gets a lot of flack for this decision, especially in the service department, where the limited number of Tesla service locations can cause frustration among customers.

A recent example highlighting this issue is the case of a new Cybertruck owner who had to wait three months and pay $13,304 to get a minor fender bender fixed on his Cybertruck.

However, while Tesla's lack of a dealership network has drawbacks, our story, which includes former NBA star Shaquille O'Neal, reminds us that Tesla’s direct-to-customer approach also offers numerous benefits.

At 7 feet 1, Shaq is in a small group of extremely tall men. As a result, Shaq can not simply pick out a vehicle and expect it to be a perfect fit without prior measurement.

However, it appears that a dealer has used this knowledge to bamboozle the former NBA star into buying a version of the Tesla Cybertruck that does not exist.

The dealership in question is Effortless Motors. This is the same company that fellow NBA star Lebron James exposed last month for falsely claiming he is their number one VIP customer.

The dealership posted a picture of a Bugatti getting loaded onto a truck while tagging Lebron James: “Congratulations to our biggest VIP customer @kingjames for Trusting Effortless Motors.”

A couple of days later, LeBron exposed the company's deceitful practices, writing on Instagram, “I don't know y'all, and I don't even have that car.”

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This is how Shaq first learned about the dealership, which surprisingly led him to wonder, “If LeBron and I are about the same height and if LeBron doesn’t want the Bugatti, maybe I might check it out.”

As an outsider, I find it amusing that Shaq saw a dealership trying to hoodwink its customers and wondered if he could purchase a vehicle from them.

Having said that, for whatever reason, Shaq decided to contact the dealership, and that is when Effortless Motors decided to employ the same deceitful tactics on Shaq as they did on LeBron.

Below is Shaq describing the conversation he had with Effortless Motors before he bought his Cybertruck.

Something to note here is that at this point, Shaq doesn’t appear to have caught on to the fact that he was lied to by the dealership and seems happy with his purchase and dealings with Effortless Motors.

However, listening to him recount his experience, you can see the dealership pulled a fast one on him and made him believe there is a bigger version of the Cybertruck called the Cyberbeast.

Here is what Shaq said during his appearance on his personal podcast…

“Can I tell you how I got my Cybertruck? So, a company on Instagram, look them up, Effortless Motors, tagged that they sold Lebron a car. Lebron got upset; he said you liar, whatever. So, I was thinking if Lebron can fit in this car and he doesn’t want it, let me call them and say, hey Lebron is 6’9, 6’10, let me see the vehicle cause, like whenever I buy cars, I know I cannot fit in, I have to look at the back seat.

I can always move the seat back if there are 6 to 8 inches in the backseat. So when I called, the guy who picked up the phone was standing in front of these trucks. I was like, what is that? He was like, it’s the Cyberbeast “a little bit bigger than the Cybertruck,” and I was like, how much? And he gave me the deal of a lifetime, so I said, you know what? If you could bring it to Vegas, I will do it, and he brought it to Vegas, and I bought the Cybertruck.”

Following this, Shaq shares a video of him with the Effortless Motors representative taking delivery of his Cybertruck Cyberbeast.

As you can see, if you watch the video the whole way to the end, Shaq appears to be extremely happy that he purchased a Cybertruck.

However, listening to him recount his experience of buying his Cybertruck, it appears that the NBA star was falsely led to believe he was purchasing a bigger version of the Cybertruck called the Cyberbeast.

Just to set the records straight, if you have any doubts about the Cyberbeast, the Cyberbeast is not a larger version of the Cybertruck but rather the tri-motor performance variant with 840 horsepower and the ability to go 0 to 60 miles per hour in 2.9 seconds.

However, in terms of external appearance and internal and external dimensions, the “regular” Cyberbeast and the Cybertruck dual motor All-Wheel-Drive variant are the same.

Shaq’s story is amusing; however, it’s unfortunately part of a larger trend of dealerships using their nefarious tactics to upcharge and sell Tesla vehicles, especially the Cybertruck, to unsuspecting customers.

A few months back, we covered a story about a dealer pressuring an NFL player to illegally purchase a Cybertruck for $100,000 over MSRP.

Overall, although we wish it was under better circumstances, we are nonetheless happy to see Shaq so excited to take delivery of his Cybertruck.

This is all the information we have currently; however, we’ll be sure to keep you posted if we get an update on this story. Until then, make sure to visit our site, torquenews.com/Tesla, regularly for the latest updates.

So, what do you think? Are you surprised to see a dealer tricking Shaq into believing there is a bigger version of the Cybertruck called the Cyberbeast? Also, do you think Shaq is to blame here for contacting a dealership he knew was trying to scam its customers? Let us know your thoughts in the comments by clicking the red “Add new comment” button below.

Image: Screenshot from WhipAddict YouTube video

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Tinsae Aregay has been following Tesla and the evolution of the EV space daily for several years. He covers everything about Tesla, from the cars to Elon Musk, the energy business, and autonomy. Follow Tinsae on Twitter at @TinsaeAregay for daily Tesla news.