Not a single week passes by without new Cybertruck-related talking points surfacing online. Whether it’s a Hot Wheels RC Tesla Cybertruck or actual details about the real thing, Tesla’s polarizing pickup truck still has a lot of fire in its belly to stay in the headlines for the time being.

Elon Musk announces new Cybertruck width rating plus a very cool feature

As you all know, Tesla doesn’t really do press releases, and its car launches are unorthodox to say the least. It’s often through Elon Musk’s tweets that the public hears about a new feature or Tesla’s future plans, and the Cybertruck makes no exception.

In a tweet from 21 February 2020, Elon Musk made a revision of his previous announcement that the production-ready Cybertruck would be around 80 inches wide, arguing that “this is slightly too small.” The prototype shown during the November 2019 unveil measured roughly 84 inches in width, but it looks like the Tesla finally settled on a figure, which is “closer to 82 inches.”

Btw, in some prior tweets I’d said production Cybertruck would be ~80” wide (vs ~84” body width at unveil). This is slightly too small. Will be closer to 82”, but come standard with upper laser blade lights.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 21, 2020

In case you’re thinking that this change will affect the Cybertruck’s overall design, fret not, because in another tweet further down the thread, Musk reassures us that the Cybertruck will even look “slightly better.”

It’s slightly better

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2020

Enter the Cybertruck’s new laser lights

After clarifying width-related matters what concern the Tesla Cybertruck, Elon Musk went on to disclose that the all-electric pickup will offer “upper laser blade lights” as standard. At this point, we don’t exactly care about width anymore, mostly because laser blade lights sounds too cool to be true.

Of course, Tesla’s interpretation of laser lights could be different than ours, just like it was the case with bulletproof. Surely, you’re asking the same thing:

What Are Laser Blade Lights?

Well, we can’t know for sure what laser blade lights are until Tesla or Musk provide more details, but we can look at other carmakers that have used laser tech inside their cars.

Two names that instantly spruce to mind with the topic of laser lights are BMW and Audi. BMW, for example, sees laser lights as a logical next step after LED technology, a view that is also shared by Audi.

Laser lighting generates about 170 lumens/watt, while LEDs can produce only around 100 lumens/watt. Besides being more efficient and brighter, laser light can be generated by diodes that are up to 100 times smaller than the smallest LED cells (these typically measure around one square millimeter).

This opens new possibilities in terms of where the headlights can be positioned as well as what shape should they take - smaller diodes generally allow designers to get more creative with the light cluster design. In addition, laser lights need just half the energy of regular LEDs.

Audi’s laser tech, for example, brought together a rapidly-moving micro-mirror tasked with redirecting the laser beam. What this means, basically, is that it can project the light coming from the diodes on a variable area (larger or smaller), where and when it matters most.

It’s yet unclear what sort of solution will Tesla adopt for the so called laser blade lights of its Cybertruck, but the idea itself does sound enticing. We’ll come back on the topic once we find out more.