Prior to patch 2.0, vehicular combat was limited to scripted events, usually with V as the passenger in some vehicle or another. It was somewhere between an interactive cutscene and an on-rails shooter, and while these vehicular combat events weren’t bad, the lack of freeform vehicular combat seemed like an odd omission. As of patch 2.0 that shortcoming has been fixed, as V can now voluntarily engage in combat while driving vehicles. This page will discuss how vehicular combat works in Cyberpunk 2077 patch 2.0, including controls for vehicle combat, how to use quickhacks on enemy vehicles, how weaponized vehicles work, and more.

Vehicle Combat Controls in Cyberpunk Patch 2.0¶

To initiate vehicular combat, just get in any vehicle and press , which will bring up a reticle (assuming you have a ranged weapon equipped or are driving a weaponized vehicle), allowing you to aim and fire at targets. Equipped weapons function identically when used in this fashion as they do while on foot, but it’s worth noting some things:

• You cannot use melee weapons in cars or trucks - only motorcycles and other unroofed vehicles.
• You cannot use two-handed weapons, including any two-handed melee weapons, shotguns, assault rifles, or sniper rifles. You can, however, use pistols, SMGs, revolvers, and one-handed melee weapons.
• You cannot throw grenades while driving.
• You cannot use arm-based cyberware, like Gorilla Arms, Mantis Blades, Monowires, and Projectile Launchers.

It’s also worth noting that it can be somewhat difficult to disable vehicles, as they can soak a fair amount of damage. The efficient play is to take out the driver, whenever possible - something that’s further complicated by some vehicles having armored windows. Tech pistols and SMGs that can pierce armor work fairly well, especially ones that don’t need to be charged to penetrate armor (like the Raiju), as charging requires you to hold down to aim and to fire and charge, something that can be tricky to do while trying to drive.

Vehicle Controls List¶

Below you’ll find a list of vehicular combat controls:

Weaponized Vehicles¶

Some weapons come with built-in armaments, and are denoted by a special icon when selecting vehicles (hold the [right] button down to bring up a list of vehicles you own to see these icons). You’ll also be informed that a vehicle is weaponized when you enter. Weaponized vehicles usually come armed with two types of munitions, a pair of heavy machine guns (50 rounds before a painfully long reload) and salvos of missiles that will arc up into the air before descending wherever the reticle was aimed when firing. After firing, these missile salvos will replenish over time, and you can have up to three salvos banked. You cannot switch to weapons V has equipped when riding in weaponized vehicles.

While the armaments possessed by weaponized vehicles are powerful - powerful enough that you don’t need to worry about hitting the driver, the missiles and machine guns can destroy vehicles outright - there are some downsides. First, the missiles are somewhat limited in supply and their AoE makes them risky to use on the streets of Night City - if you hit civilians, you’ll just end up with law enforcement on you, which isn’t ideal. Second, the machine guns are fixed - you’ll get laser sights showing you where they’ll land, but you have to be facing your target and on level ground to hit anything, making them of dubious utility against enemies content to chase you.

Quickhacking and Vehicle Combat¶

Guns and missiles are fine and all, but if you have a netrunner cyberdeck equipped, you can also use quickhacks to tilt the odds in your favor during vehicular combat (read: break the game in your favor, as quickhacks tend to do). While not in combat mode you can press the button to bring up your scanner (in combat you’ll need to press + ), where ideally you’ll target an enemy driver to bring up the standard quickhacking menu. Aiming is for the birds, and using quickhacks to defeat enemy drivers is a quick, cheesy way of ending pursuit - enemies are fortunately too dumb to switch seats. The efficacy of using quickhacks depends on the quality of your cyberdeck, quickhacks, and the perks you’ve purchased, but if you can target the driver (or passenger - bouncing a Contagion quichack off them works just fine) you’re golden.

As the Spartans said to Phillip II of Macedon when he threatened to destroy them if he invaded Laconia, however… “If”. It can be tricky to pick out enemies in hostile vehicles while driving, even with the generous slowdown provided while scanning, and some vehicles have combat shields that seem to prevent their occupants from being targeted. All is not lost, however, as purchasing the “Carhacker” perk in the Intelligence tree will allow you to target vehicles directly, albeit with a limited selection of default quickhacks (these do not need to be equipped and are always available), the most useful of which is arguably “Self Destruct”, although it has a significant RAM cost.

Vehicle Combat Perks¶

With the addition of vehicular combat and the complete overhaul of perk trees in patch 2.0, it should be no surprise that numerous new vehicle-focused perks were added to the perk trees, with every perk tree getting one such perk

The usefulness of these perks depends on your build and preferred playstyle, but for our perk points, the Carhacking one is awfully useful… assuming you have a nethacking cyberdeck installed, of course. All of these perks only have one rank and can be purchased when your attribute reaches Rookie-tier (4 points in the related attribute).

Now that you know how vehicular combat works, put it to use by completing some carjackings for El Capitan, and check out other systems that have changed with the introduction of patch 2.0:

• Gameplay Changes in Cyberpunk Patch 2.0
• Skill Progression in Cyberpunk Patch 2.0 - How to Level Skills
• Attribute Changes in Cyberpunk Patch 2.0
• Vehicle Theft Contracts in Cyberpunk 2077 - Push It to the Limit