At the current rate of horrible fiery deaths, FuelArc projects the Cybertruck will have 14.52 fatalities per 100,000 units — far eclipsing the Pinto’s 0.85. (In absolute terms, FuelArc found, 27 Pinto drivers died in fires, while five Cybertruck drivers have suffered the same fate, at least so far.)
I was driving out of a parking lot yesterday just as a Cybertruck started to pull in off the street from the left. The driver was white-knuckling the wheel and was frantically looking around as I assume he could barely see out of the goddamn thing as he swung so wide he nearly clipped my car. He needed almost the entire driveway to make his turn.
I cannot imagine dropping so much money on something so useless and so hideous.
well i hate to say this (really i do), turning is actually one of the only strong points about the CT. It can do a u-turn in the same-ish radius as a model 3, much better than most vehicles in its class.
that driver was just a fucking moron
The thing is a very obvious death trap to anyone that knows simple physics. There are videos testing what happens when a Cybertruck hits a hard wall at certain speeds. That thing didn’t crumple at all until speeds greater than 35 mph. And even then it only barely crumples at all. The damage it could produce hitting another vehicle would be catastrophic and fatal.
I’m guessing that some people at the National Transportation Safety Board are about to get fired by Elon Musk.
Safety belts are a waste of precious money!
Won’t someone think of the shareholders!
Safe at any speed!
Do they have emergency releases on the outside? I know a locked door of a car with traditional latching mechanisms won’t open. But an unlocked vehicle where a bystander cannot render aid in an emergency seems so… Short sighted.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O2fUhCCuTto
Not in the outside, but the rear releases are hidden in the door well under a vanity mat
It is on purposes. He wants a cyberpunk fantasy car. You know what you can do in many cyberpunk games? Blow up cars with the slightest of ease. They’re made of explodium in some games, and in Cyberpunk 2077 there is a quickhack (like a magic spell, but cyberpunk) that can cause the car to literally explode.
Can you imagine for one second if someone managed to find a way to consistently connect to Tesla vehicles AND found a way to cause the battery to overheat and burn? The door autolock will cause the passengers to be trapped and be burned alive.
I don’t think this is an accident. No one can be that stupid to make something like that by accident.
I love Elon Bad posts, but I think it’s worthwhile to examine why Elon bad in this case.
Like many reactionaries, Elon’s business philosophy is pure tech-bro-libertarianism. And like all libertarians, he’s stuck in the neoliberal mindset of less regulation (don’t scrutinize) and more efficiency (let me be cheap), in order to create the safe space that industrialists need to
extract, er create.He’s literally said things like (paraphrasing)
When I see a specification for three bolts I ask: why can’t we do it with two?
His transparent reasoning is that if he’s allowed to cut corners, he’ll save money today and consequences can be dealt with when they arise.
He’s following the software model of release a minimally viable product and patch it later. Only instead of user frustration at being beta testers, you fucking die maybe.
oh god that quote. he’s so lame and fucking stupid.
I’m sure corner cutting is a concern but also he’s so insecure he probably read things about Steve Jobs or something, and tried to ape him. I remember something about Jobs supposedly telling employees to reduce steps in some processes or whatever. this idiot doesn’t understand anything so he thinks asking for fewer bolts is the same thing.
why can’t we do it in two? cause that’s how you secure things you fucking dumbass. your proud fascination for “fewer bolts” is why your hypercuck tried to kill a driver.
Him and his libertarian friends fuck up left and right. Crashing startups and just getting more money for another. Constant recalls. Blowing up rockets until it works.
Yet they hold the government to a standard of being perfect and high performing with no room for failure. NASA can’t be blowing up rockets. As soon as they do the world comes down on them.
And Trump is the biggest fuckup of all these guys.
Blowing up rockets until it works is a far better approach than trying to get everything to work on the first try and ending up with a hugely overpriced white elephant.
I see you don’t understand testing things before they are safe for humans to be inside of. So by this logic, you are saying “blowing up rockets until it works” is also saying “crash testing cars is stupid.”
<blank stare>
If NASA was funded properly, we may not be leaning on one private company, whose owner is a nazi, to be paving our way forward for daily space activities. Can’t say things won’t blow up during testing, but at least it won’t be headed by that guy.
The issue isn’t the way of testing, but the two standards. If Musk blows up rockets in testing it’s a genius move with rapid iteration. If NASA does this it’s irresponsible handling of tax payer’s money on risky endeavors.
I stand by my comment. Things break, shit happens, this is why we test them.
I think it’s also worth noting that Elon Musk is a scammer. Every other word out of his mouth is likely a lie. He’s been claiming to already have technologies available for his Tesla cars, his SpaceX rockets, etc, all ready to go and… it never happened. Tesla full self driving? The Tesla taxis? SpaceX on Mars? The Tesla laughably stupid robots? Even those were faked.
Claims after claims for decades and literally no results
The guy is a full on bait and switch yet everyone seems to lap up everything this scammer says.
You can’t use “literally” and “paraphrasing” like that.
You can’t use “literally” and
… be over 14
That’s literally not true.
Also, normally the cost savings should go to the client, not into some billionaires bank account.
He is like a child who is still rebelling against his parents who made him go to bed early too many times.
An MVP should not be a beta version, but fully functional and bug-free. The idea is to reduce scope to not necessarily even release it (though that’s possible) but to have a solid foundation onto which to duct-tape bells and whistles.
The MVP of a car doesn’t have heated seats, heck the seats might not even be adjustable without a wrench, but it’s absolutely going to drive and drive well and be crash-safe. Because if it doesn’t it’s nowhere close to being a viable car, go back and fix that before spending time on those seats.
is pure tech-bro-libertarianism
Tech bros are usually not libertarian. Being excited about a failed solution to only one of libertarian problems (blockchain) doesn’t make one libertarian, too.
And like all libertarians, he’s stuck in the neoliberal mindset of less regulation (don’t scrutinize) and more efficiency (let me be cheap)
That’s not libertarianism, more like Ayn Rand and her inverse bolshevism with good mighty benevolent industrial aristocracy and bad stupid mischievous everyone else. She even reads like one of Valentin Pikul’s “historical novels”, only with inverted good and bad guys. That ideology is radically different from libertarianism, instead of freedom, voluntarism, non-aggression and such, resulting in a free society with free contracts, Ayn Rand says that some people are better than the others and thus freedom, voluntarism, non-aggression etc are measures by relative value of the offender and the victim. It’s jungle law.
Anyway, it’s not “neoliberal” either, anti-monopoly regulations are part of the “ideal” free market model. And I think Elon likes patents and trademarks, which are not necessarily there (and in libertarianism are not a thing).
His transparent reasoning is that if he’s allowed to cut corners, he’ll save money today and consequences can be dealt with when they arise.
You might have seen the recent news about Tesla sales falling. Maybe it took so long because of accumulated trust into regulators not allowing car makers to make dangerous crap. So - then maybe in other reality, where Elon came to an industry already allowed to cut corners, he’d go bankrupt by now because of consumers understanding who he is.
Life is complex, I’m not saying he’s right, just that.
He’s following the software model of release a minimally viable product and patch it later. Only instead of user frustration at being beta testers, you fucking die maybe.
The way software industry works, a lot of people have died due to its failures. One has to count people who’ve committed suicide due to events cause by some bug or even UX problem, people who failed to communicate something in time, thus possibly saving someone, people who disclosed what they shouldn’t have, thus possibly causing a criminal death, medical errors due to software problems, wars, catastrophes.
But yes, it’s already allowed to do that and Elon wants such wonders in other industries, so that we’d have a bit of natural selection in our daily lives. Dystopian cyberpunk is called dystopian because it’s not utopian, but being a billionaire, I guess, one would dream of living in such instead of utopian version of boring past.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a simplification mindset. Automotive manufacturers certainly do like to overcomplicate things. Unfortunately people like him only care about costs and not quality.
…and unlike the Pinto, because we are so deep into fucked-reality-ville, it won’t get recalled.
Nah, he will just get more government grants to “fix” it. (Aren’t they up to like 30% grants at this point?)
Nah. The Ford Pinto laid the groundwork for the NHTSA’s regulatory control of forced recalls. The only way this thing doesn’t get recalled for being dangerous is if Musk’s D. o. g. e manages to undercut or defund the NHTSA.
Additionally, other countries with better regulatory bodies won’t even allow it to be sold or will require mandatory recall of these vehicles which means the end of the cyber truck. They can’t even sell them because people don’t want them.
The other thing is that insurance companies can absolutely refuse to insure them and if I’m honest, they may be the main reason that the NHTSA doesn’t back down from regulating them (insurance companies are a powerful lobby, and they absolutely can countermand the automotive lobby in some cases).
My point is, it’s more complicated than just “Musk is a government official now, and historically dangerous cars weren’t recalled”.
It will take Leon 20 minutes to shut down the whole agency claiming that they actually eat babies and people will just go with it.
I don’t know why you keep saying intentionally inflammatory things that don’t take into account the full list of factors and facts we have about how the real world works, but you do you, I guess.
Because the way the world worked changed a few months ago. Trump is immune and has pardon powers.
You’d be surprised at how little it’s changed. Oligarchs are still oligarchs. You think the Ford and GMC CEOs are just gonna let Musk come in and eat their lunch when they have a whole swathe of legal teams just waiting for the government to breach a contract?
I hope you are right, but all oligarchs fell in line real quick so far. Donating millions to Trump, getting rid of DEI, unbanning nazis, etc. Tax breaks are coming and they don’t want to be excluded.
NHTSA
Project 2025 has explicit targets for reforming NHTSA. It is unambiguously in their sights, just lower on the priority list.
Agreed. And that’s where consumer choice comes in. People don’t want them. Tesla is having to rework their entire plant to use the assembly lines that produce cybertrucks because they can’t sell the ones they’ve already made. They projected and prepared to manufacturer and sell 500,000 and they’ve sold something like 40,000 and the rest are just sitting in retail lots or holding lots collecting dust. The best estimate seems to be that they might be able to sell another 30,000 in 2025. But with tax credits for EV’s going away and other regulations going into effect world wide, that is probably a pipe dream.
On a scale from 0 to 3 (out of 10), how surprised would you be to read that the DHS decided to purchase 250.000 cybertrucks, because they are bulletproof? Before you go to Google it - I made it up, but there is a 50% chance of it coming in the next weeks.
I would be surprised for a lot of reasons. The main one being, they’d have to be dirt cheap and have an exceptional warranty agreement attached in order to compete with other automakers who make bulletproof vehicles. And, further there’s too many other problems with the amount of information they collect that the DHS would not have full and direct control over. Tesla’s are well known for recording anything and everything. We learned when they blew one up outside that Trump Hotel that they can be remotely locked by Tesla the company. A private company should not have that kind of direct access to government vehicles of any kind.
I think that really underestimates how corruption would work. Tesla might make a show of a “government edition” software loadout, whether because they had to or even as theater to pretend they catered to government requirements when in actuality it’s largely the same but maybe with some branding.
In terms of pricing, I’m sure that any actually “bulletproof” vehicles cost plenty. Which is why even departments like the DHS have largely unarmored fleets. Tesla wouldn’t meet those standards, but the marketing might be sufficient to serve as a bullet point over the current non-armored vehicles they use.
I think we can count on the corruption and legal rights of other companies more than you think apparently. Tesla’s not the only car company. They certainly don’t have the same pull in the government as Ford and GMC and Dodge. Tesla is a brand new player who cannot be trusted to follow the rules and deactivate or unequip any sensors and components for tracking that the government would require (on trucks they have already manufactured for the civilian market - which would be the case because Tesla already has significant stock it can’t sell). The government don’t have the qualified personnel to upkeep these vehicles, and that’s assuming they even have a place to store a fleet of them that’s covered parking.
A government software load out is not going to be enough. When the government buys vehicles they specifically have them manufactured to a spec and that spec would have to involve the removal and or lack of installation of most of the sensors and capabilities the vehicle comes with stock. So they either have to buy them as is and modify them (which requires personnel with a specific set of training and qualifications), or they have to be manufactured to that spec at the Tesla factory (or retrofitted to remove the unwanted components).
DHS’s armored and unarmored fleets can be washed, can be parked in an uncovered lot, can be maintenanced by the personnel they already have. There’s way more to buying a fleet of vehicles than just the price tag for individual units.
I work on planes for a living including government planes when we get the contract for those and let me tell you, they differ quite a lot from conventional civilian planes even when the base plane is the same. Tesla doesn’t already have a contract, and even if they get one that money isn’t allocated to them in the budget. There’s plenty of other reasons why I think this is a BS take, but man even corruption has a shelf life. Trump may be out of office in a couple of years but the entire government won’t just up and retire with him. Their corruption will definitely conflict with his because these are career politicians and Trump is liable to die in office.
The skin is literally handgun resistant not anything more than that. And the windows aren’t bullet proof. They’d have to modify each door to take bulletproof glass. It’s prohibitively expensive on a vehicle that wasn’t engineered for that.
It’s the kind of thing I’ll believe when I see it and not a moment before.
You mean that dog killer lady and Nazi weirdo care about competition and data security?
They aren’t the only people who have a say in what happens. It’s funny to me that y’all clearly don’t know how the government works or how much red tape there is. Tesla is an overvalued and under performing company that barely deserves to be called an automotive manufacturer.
The government has already signed contracts with other car manufacturers for the purposes of armored vehicles. Those manufacturers will absolutely sue for breach of contract in the event that the government doesn’t pay them and utilize their vehicles. Further, there are still regulations and specifications that are required to be met. They can’t fire everyone no matter how much they think they can. And Congress will not jeopardize their cash cows.
It’s a lot of different echelons of the government that this type of thing has to go through and it’s definitely not going to happen overnight. I’m not saying it can’t happen. I’m saying that it’ll take time and the other automotive companies will fight back against anything they see as a conflict of interest.
I can understand that people think things look bleak. But like half of what’s going on right now is scare tactics to make the general populace capitulate without a fight. The people who know how things work are very rarely ever at the top of anything. The people who get shit done are rarely at the top.
The budget is already signed sealed and delivered. Where’s DHS gonna get this money? Because I would bet other car manufacturers have already bid for the contract for new vehicles. So unless you’ve got something that says Tesla won the bid, quit playing with me.
Look, all I’m asking is that Tesla investors lose all their goddamn money.
I would love it if the board voted Elon out. I know it won’t happen because they’re a bunch of sycophants, but “Elons antics and poor decisions are causing us to lose money” is a great reason to do so.
Lol. You’re getting your wish. They basically would be in the red if it weren’t for some credits and Bitcoin they sold.
I’d like to thank you for this measured take in response to my unbridled cynicism.
To be fair, you made a good point. In the article it states pretty definitively that the NHTSA hasn’t been allowed to have the Cybertruck independently crash tested which is bogus as hell.
The fact that it can’t force that from any car manufacturer doesn’t really make sense. They haven’t even received relevant data related to Tesla’s in house crash testing and I can’t even begin to understand how that’s legal.
They will be neutered even further soon, they’re on the project 2025 list.
I mean, the thing is already outright illegal in most countries where pedestrian safety is taken into account. An EU version would have to look completely different.
Probably why he’s closed the CFPB.
These are cybertruck owners…
Why are we talkaing about this? Who needs this sheet?
I was thinking “What’s that red stu—oh…” Yikes.
Melted plastic… right? Yup imma say it’s melted platic
Is it me or are there guts in this picture?
Hard to tell. The picture was widely used in the media, and they’re usually quite careful about that kind of thing. There’s something reddish in it, but it could be material from the truck or its contents. One of the photos the police released of his guns had some red foamy material in it, another photo had some stringy red material (plastic?) lying in the road, and there were various red items in the bed too. I’ll mark it NSFW just in case.
The driver was inside the vehicle at the time, so I’m sure some of that is his remains. But a lot is probably burned seat material and such. It’s hard to say for sure.
Apparently it’s a photo from “Cybertruck explosion outside Trump international hotel investigated for terror ties”
Looks like it 🤢
And some people wonder why the cybertruck is barely sold outside the US.
Everything I hear about this thing is bad.
It’s barely sold in the US as well.
Might have something to do with it looking fucking stupid.
I have no problem with something looking stupid. The problem for me is not just that it looks stupid, but that it is stupid. It’s a stupid thing that shouldn’t exist.
It’s barely sold outside the US because other places (like the EU) also care about the safety of people outside the vehicle. That’s why European and Asian cars (except the models explicitly for the US market like the Tacoma) are designed for pedestrians to be deflected, while US cars are a moving brick wall which will squish them like a bug.
Also, I suspect you’d need commercial plates and a special license to drive it most other places, due to the weight.
Do you have a reasonable alternative solution to teach pedestrians lessons?
Edit: (/s)
Pedestrians would probably learn more from the experience if they don’t die.
(sorry dropped /s)
It’s only available in North America / Mexico. It won’t fly with many vehicle regulations outside of the US.
I imagine the sharp edges are more than enough to keep it out of Europe forever. Pedestrians need to be able to roll onto a vehicle in an EU pedestrian collision. The Cybertruck will lop you in half.
Really took the wind out of my satirical comment that Musk wanted to bring back the Pinto.
Who needs satire when you have reality?
But it is so financially efficient! It isn’t wasting money on safety.
What a dumpster fire that truck is.
I look at the cartoon from Byrnes and it reminds me of the US healthcare system.
¿Por qué no las dos?
I would trust a Smart Fortwo more than the POS Cybertruck.
It seems obvious in hindsight. Sheet metal doors will crumple in a way that can’t be opened, trapping occupants. The fire doesn’t need to start in the relatively safe and armored battery system. It could be pinched wiring causing a short that ignites plastic interiors, or a fire from another vehicle spreading to the cybertruck.
I’m sure someone mentioned all this to them during design.
Plus there’s the electronic opening mechanisms that fail in the event of a fire. This is on most Teslas iirc. Even if the doors are intact, you’re stuck.
There’s ways to open them, but good luck with this shit when you’re concussed from an accident, and sat in a burning vehicle.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html
