On the evening of Monday 18 May, Grapevine Police and the Grapevine Fire Department were called to Katie's Woods Park Boat Ramp at Grapevine Lake, Texas, where a Tesla Cybertruck was sitting in the water near the shoreline. The driver, identified by CBS Texas as Jimmy Jack McDaniel, told officers he had driven the truck into the lake deliberately, intending to use Wade Mode. The truck became disabled, took on water, and McDaniel and his passenger abandoned it. The Fire Department's Water Rescue Team spent several hours recovering the vehicle, hoisting it out by crane after dark.
McDaniel was arrested and charged with operating a vehicle in a closed section of a park or lake, having no valid boat registration, and multiple water safety equipment violations. As of Tuesday he remained in Grapevine Jail. The Grapevine Police Department added a note to its statement for anyone who might be considering a similar experiment:
"Although a vehicle may be physically capable of entering shallow freshwater areas, doing so can create legal and safety concerns under Texas law."
The context here matters. Elon Musk has been telling Cybertruck buyers since 2022 that the vehicle would eventually be capable of crossing rivers, lakes, and seas. He posted on X that it would be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat. Tesla's own vice president of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy, appeared on Jay Leno's Garage and floated the idea that with an outboard motor plugged into the truck's outlet, you could theoretically go boating. None of that is in the owner's manual. What is in the owner's manual is a maximum wade depth of around 32 inches from the bottom of the tyre, designed for crossing a shallow creek or flooded track section, not navigating a lake.
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Tesla's warranty reflects the manual, not Musk's posts. Water damage is not covered. This is not the first time the gap between those two positions has ended badly for a Cybertruck owner. Last year a driver in Truckee, California activated Wade Mode and got stuck, requiring California Highway Patrol assistance. The CHP's response became something of a motto for the situation: Wade Mode is not Submarine Mode. A Cybertruck in Slovakia went into a lake the same way and with the same result. The pattern is consistent enough that it now has a body of incident reports behind it.
The charges McDaniel faces include the boat registration violation, which may be the most efficient summary of what went wrong. If you drive a vehicle into a navigable lake in Texas without registering it as a watercraft, Texas law is not interested in your explanation about what the CEO said on the internet.
The truck weighed more than three tons before it took on water. It was never going anywhere but down.
Sources
- Grapevine Police Department — Official statement via Twitter/X
- CBS Texas — Driver intentionally drove Cybertruck into North Texas lake to use vehicle's "Wade Mode", police say
- WFAA — Driver jailed after driving Tesla Cybertruck into Grapevine Lake
- Electrek — Tesla Cybertruck owner believed Elon Musk when he said it could cross a lake — now he's in jail
- Carscoops — A Cybertruck Owner Just Turned Wade Mode Into Get Arrested Mode In Texas
