The Hutto City Council has asked city staff to price out a three-truck Tesla Cybertruck trial for the Hutto Police Department and other city departments, a step it took at its Oct. 15 meeting, according to Community Impact.
Council member Jerrel Reynolds, who bought his own Cybertruck in April, told colleagues the truck had cost him little in fuel and upkeep, and he urged staff to contact the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which runs 10 of them. Mayor Mike Snyder backed a closer look. “I think this is the future,” he said, adding that the decision would depend on how the costs compare side by side.
What staff will study
Staff will compare the Cybertruck with Hutto’s current patrol vehicles on fuel, maintenance, safety features and service life. The council wants the review to include charging equipment, parts and repairs, warranties, insurance, data privacy and liability, along with upfitting costs and data from other cities that use electric police vehicles. Council member Corina Zepeda said any savings should come with a clear safety gain, and the city has not set a date for the report.
Las Vegas did not pay for its trucks. The 10-truck fleet, unveiled on Oct. 28, 2025, was funded by a donation of about $2.7 million from venture capitalist Ben Horowitz and his wife Felicia, the Associated Press reported. Sheriff Kevin McMahill valued each truck at $80,000 to $115,000, and about 400 officers were trained to drive them. The trucks have no self-driving features, and UP.FIT, a division of Unplugged Performance, fitted them with lights, sirens, prisoner partitions and pursuit-grade brakes.
What the savings numbers rest on
The widely shared claim that each truck saves Las Vegas $9,500 a year comes from UP.FIT, the company that sells and converts the trucks, and not from audited fleet records. At launch, UP.FIT projected at least $47,540 in savings per truck over five years, based on 2024 Las Vegas fuel and electricity prices. Its “most American-made” claim has some independent support, and American University’s 2026 Kogod Made in America Auto Index ranks the Cybertruck tied for third among all vehicles sold in the U.S.
Still, purchase price is the open question for Hutto. Irvine, California, paid more than $150,000 for one upfitted Cybertruck in 2024, compared with about $116,000 for an outfitted Ford Police Interceptor. Critics have raised other concerns too, including two large Cybertruck recalls in 2025 and warnings from the ACLU of Nevada that Tesla could gain access to police data.
A few Texas agencies, including those in Kemah and Starbase, have started testing Cybertrucks, but police fleets of them remain small. So for Hutto, the most useful check may be the one Reynolds proposed. Las Vegas has run its trucks for about a year, and its fuel, repair and downtime records could give the council harder numbers than any vendor estimate.
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