Tesla Cybertruck’s stiff structure, sharp design raise safety concerns - experts::The angular design of Tesla’s Cybertruck has safety experts concerned that the electric pickup truck’s stiff stainless-steel exoskeleton could hurt pedestrians and cyclists.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
This is never going to be available in Europe. Sad because I like it. Can’t afford it in 100yrs but would like to see others drive it.
I don’t jump the hype and hate it just because “Elon made that”. It is a cool shape, different than other cars. Doug DeMuro would have his hands full with all the quircks&features.
Gonna be real fun to see the crash test rating.
Without crumple zones, all of the kinetic energy goes into the occupants.
OTOH it weighs almost 7000lbs (~3100kg) so it’s going to plow through most of everything with its sheer mass.
Go hit a 10"+ tree in a pickup and see how fast you stop. You can wander over and pick the engine up when it flies out the hood. The tree will loose some bark.
https://tellyspotting.kera.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/be102f-20170208-spinal-tap.jpg
Been there, done that. 0/10. Do not recommend.
Same, hit a small (maybe 5") tree going about 60mph. Came to a complete stop immediately and put my head through the windshield. We went and peeled the license plate off the tree the next day.
I guess it put a little mark on the tree but it was basically fine, completely destroyed the car though.
For me it was a rather large tree that I hit at about 100km/h (+60mph). Tree was fine. Car, not so much. The ambulance ride was nice though, and the first responders thought we were extremely lucky to be alive.
Wear your seat belts kids.
I know it’s fun to bash Tesla every now and then for their ridiculous things.
But do you really think, after making 4 vehicles with top of the line safety, that they will just say ‘eh, fuck it’ with the cybertruck?
It’s an aluminum casting base construction, just like the Model Y, so why would there be no crumble zones?
That actually would be on brand for Musk.
There are crumple zones, they’re just not as big as those in competing trucks. But yeah, the safety comparison is probably negligible, what really makes me think it’s a bad truck is the design of the bed. It’s got slanted walls. That really limits what you can haul and how you can get it into the bed.
Yeah the practicality of the cybertruck is definitely questionable!
If anyone actually cared about this they’d be going after Ford and Chevy, not a vehicle that isn’t even available to the public yet.
While Chevy and Ford have giant trucks too, they also crumple where the stainless steel Tesla doesn’t. Crumpling makes the vehicle dissipate the force of a crash in case you weren’t aware.
Regardless, no one needs this Tesla monstrosity just like no one needs the giant vehicles Americans seem to be obsessed with.
Even with the crumple, the mass of those vehicles is enormous hence the force a pedestrian or a cyclist will experience is much higher compared to a normal size passenger vehicle.
None of these monster trucks are going to crumple from a fleshy pedestrian. Crumple zones are for when you hit another vehicle or tree or something
Unless I’m mistaken, crumpling is meant to protect the driver and passengers. Not pedestrians, cyclists, or anyone else outside the vehicle.
why not both?
Although being fair, the other day just out of curiosity I was taking a look at electric cars in my country and almost every single one of them was a needlessly huge SUV.
There were a few exceptions, but I was not expecting that maybe 25 out of 30 cars were in the bigger size.
Because cyber trucks aren’t killing people. Trucks made by Ford and Chevy are. Why put effort into solving a problem that doesn’t exist yet when there is a real problem right now, and if you solve that one it will also solve the cyber-truck problem.
They haven’t even been on sale for two weeks and those sales have been limited. Maybe give it the well over a century that Ford and Chevy have had before making that claim.
I hope this monstrosity will never be approved in Europe. Imagine the impact passengers of a Twingo or any other small city cat will experience in the unfortunate case of a head collision
That front trunk just looks like a guillotine
Raises concerns just now? There’s a reason why civilian cars don’t look like military atvs - because they are not military atvs
Aren’t military ATVs road legal though?
Why are they hitting their heads on it? Is that really the worst possible outcome, multiple people intentionally bonking their heads on it and getting more hurt?
I don’t buy this story. I think it’s a plant.
Edit: lots of stupid replies to this comment, holy shit. At least try to understand the point I spelled out in plain English.
Found Elon!
This is a lesson that we already learned a while back.
We used to make cars that were tough, but then we noticed that people were dying way too easily when they hit a tree or a wall.
In an indestructible car, all of the forces of a crash are directly applied to the people inside of a car. You might as well have have been riding a motorcyle when you crashed. They would need some advanced harness system that gives a little on impact without letting you hit the steering wheel or center console… there’s not a whole lot of space for that.
In the cars of today, the car is meant to crumple in a way that absorbs as much of an impact as possible while trying to keep the occupants alive.
If the cybertruck is too stiff, even a collision at a slow speed will kill or severely injure the occupants.
When you hit a pedestrian, their body doesn’t stay straight. The force causes their torso to fold downward, and their head will likely impact the panel above where you struck them.
I’m guessing you’ve never seen a person hit by a car before. They don’t deflect away like video game characters. A person hit roughly in the middle of their body will be “folded” over the car, smashing their head into the body of it. Then they’re either flung away, roll over the top, or get pulled under, depends on what the driver does, how hard the hit was, and how big the vehicle is.
In a car with a molded plastic body, the head bounces back off and the plastic is dented. With a plate of solid steel, the person’s head is splattered like a melon all of the “bulletproof” windows. Then the sharp edge slices them in half. Sounds very metal until it starts happening to children several times a week.
I’m guessing they are talking about accidentally hitting someone with the car. At lower speeds, collisions shouldn’t be lethal at least with a regular car (there are a lot of other factors too, but anyway). I can imagine that if you hit a thick steel panel it’s going to cause you more damage than the regular aluminum car.
I don’t like Teslas, Musk or the cyber truck but it can’t be any more dangerous than the 4 ft wall of radiator traditional pickups have now. Not saying this isn’t a concern but I am way more concerned about the millions of pedestrian crushing rolling walls already on the road.
Tesla seem confident it’ll be safer in part because of that.
I’m wondering if they’ve done some something that can lower the front further if an imminent crash is about to happen with a pedestrian to lower the nose even more. Maybe it won’t work if you’re already at lowest setting, but if you’re raised at all maybe.
You think they’d have advertised a feature like that though by now, so maybe not, but I bet they could.
Would be a good feature for any vehicle with air suspension that can detect an imminent crash with a pedestrian
Detecting that collision is on the same order of difficulty as self-driving cars.
Pretty easy to solve. Just pay those experts to stfu. Shouldn’t be a problem for musk
Here we go again, trying to shame a narcissist out of doing the thing he was doing to get you to react by shaming him.
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Again, this whole thing smacks of some entitled person (hmmm, who though?) who knows nothing, making design decisions that are stupid and self indulgent.
I call it “The Homer”, just like the episode where Homer designed a car. You know the result…
No I don’t
Homer designed his own car, ignoring any advice from the designers and engineers who worked at the company, and ends up bankrupting said company cause no one likes the car.
I call it, the “HomerTruck!”
“Hey, I know you’re disappointed by the lack of Autopilot™, but look on the bright side, every Cybertruck comes standard with our patented Child Buster™ technology to cast those little shits into the depths hell where they belong!”
And perfect for running over protesters. And with the weight of this thing, there’s little likelihood of those pansies surviving. They don’t deserve life if they’re going to use it making your drive last 5 minutes longer.
/s
Meme car is real.
That is what you get when you slack on pedestrian safety. This a regulations problem, not a Tesla problem.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/12/07/while-other-countries-mandate-safer-car-designs-for-pedestrians-america-does-nothing
https://nacto.org/2022/05/24/why-the-u-s-gives-monster-suvs-five-star-safety-ratings-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/
Brings back some “carmageddon” nostalgia though.
Hmm, that is a game I haven’t played in two decades.