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.

  • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    165
    ·
    11 months ago

    Gonna be real fun to see the crash test rating.

    Without crumple zones, all of the kinetic energy goes into the occupants.

    • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      79
      ·
      11 months ago

      OTOH it weighs almost 7000lbs (~3100kg) so it’s going to plow through most of everything with its sheer mass.

      • Thorry84@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        102
        ·
        11 months ago

        You’d be surprised how much a concrete pillar holding up an overpass can actually take. They don’t break like in the movies, they are specifically designed to take big truck impacts and not fail. Anybody crashing a Cybertruck at highway speeds into one of those is instantly turned into red colored mashed potatoes.

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        11 months ago

        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.

      • Cornpop@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        55
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        Believe it or not in the USA it’s actually based off of self compliance in the USA. There is no specific government body that has a standardized test that they have to pass to be made legal. The manufacture gets to make that decision themselves, then if there is an issue that the government finds later they can be pulled from the road.

    • Chreutz@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      11 months ago

      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?

      • hperrin@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        23
        ·
        11 months ago

        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.

        • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          26
          ·
          11 months ago

          Let’s be real. No one is hauling anything in this truck. In my experience the more expensive truckk the less its actually used for anything.

          The entire cybertruck fleet hauling completed by 2030 is probably the equivalent to one year of 01 Nissan Frontiers…

      • SkyeStarfall
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        11 months ago

        Really think they will just say ‘eh fuck it’

        Were talking about Elon here. Yes, I do think so. In addition, don’t give too much credit, the other vehicles would always be inherently safer because they’re electric.

    • casmael@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      11 months ago

      Yeah have you seen the footage it’s as stiff as the rod up musks butt hole

      • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        42
        ·
        11 months ago

        Because unless they have been outright lying in all of their specs, the entire body is made up of the same thick stainless steel that they have shown to be literally bulletproof.

        It’s 4x as thick as current sheet metal used in other vehicles, and twice as thick as the steel bumpers used in old cars that didn’t have crumple zones.

        That combined with the fact that they have stated that all of the strength and rigidity for the truck comes from the exoskeleton, that would preclude being able to crumple.

        They have not made safety a priority in anything on this monstrosity. The windows are are all laminated and shatterproof, meaning you can’t break them to escape if there’s a fire or you end up underwater and the body is bulletproof meaning that it can’t be torn open with the jaws of life if you need to be extracted.

        It’s a giant metal coffin.

        • helenslunch@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          18
          ·
          edit-2
          11 months ago

          Because unless they have been outright lying in all of their specs, the entire body is made up of the same thick stainless steel that they have shown to be literally bulletproof.

          Bulletproof steel can still crumple. And it does. It’s not made of adamantium. It’s a completely different type of force. The vehicle was crash-tested a long time ago. Just look at the photos.

          E: wow, this guy is sharing straight up disinformation he pulled from his ass and I’m the one being downvoted…

        • Cornpop@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          11 months ago

          Windows will shatter just like any other car window, and a jaws of life would pull apart that tin can no problem.

            • Cornpop@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              11 months ago

              They are just regular tempered glass. That might have been the BS they claimed at the original announcement, but that did not make it to the production version.

        • weew@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          I don’t know what the hell you’ve been reading, but they’ve never claimed the entire truck is solid stainless steel. Just the exterior panels.

          they claimed that the exterior panels would be able to add to the rigidity and strength of the truck. Not that it was 100% rigid or that the exterior made up 100% of the structural strength.

          The interior is still basically just a regular aluminum body like all their other cars.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    97
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    Seriously, having been hit by a fairly rounded Impreza at low speed that still did significant damage, I’m shivering at the thought of what these edges would do to soft tissue and bone in the same conditions. The pressure at the contact points would be dramatically higher.

  • Eideen@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    74
    ·
    11 months ago

    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

    However, under the federal government’s current safety rating system, known as the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), almost every vehicle gets a four- or five-star rating. That’s because the system only takes into account the safety of those within cars, not all the people walking, pushing strollers, biking, or taking transit outside them.

    https://nacto.org/2022/05/24/why-the-u-s-gives-monster-suvs-five-star-safety-ratings-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/

  • SpaceBishop@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    66
    ·
    11 months ago

    could hurt pedestrians and cyclists

    I dare you to convince me that anyone still buying Tesla would not see that as a benefit. That’s going to be the number one selling point of this thing after articles like this make their rounds.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        Did you buy your Tesla since Elmo when full fash, and would you buy one now if you didn’t have one already?

        • helenslunch@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          11 months ago

          No and yes. Find me an automotive CEO that’s not a giant POS and we’ll talk. It’s a great car, overall.

            • chitak166@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              6
              ·
              edit-2
              11 months ago

              You have to be a special kind of stupid to think Musk is unique among billionaires.

              His only ‘uniqueness’ is the brand that’s attached to his name. If you notice, he behaves exactly like all other celebrity billionaires, such as Trump and Kanye.

              Every controversy is just free advertising for their brands.

              • Cows Look Like Maps@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                15
                ·
                11 months ago

                You’ll notice OP wasn’t comparing billionaires, they were comparing automotive CEOs. So that’s a scarecrow argument. All of the other automotive CEOs have an order of magnitude less wealth than Musk.

                He has the wealth of a nation state and owns one of the world’s largest social media sites, a rocket company, a car company, and actively promotes far-right hate speech and meddles in international politics.

                • AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  ·
                  11 months ago

                  At least he isn’t giving out copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

                  The automotive CEO most similar to Musk is probably Henry Ford, and I’m honestly not sure which one is worse.

              • freebee@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                11
                ·
                11 months ago

                Trump, Kanye, musk etc are the weird ones. Very wealthy people are actually likely to hide from the public and only seek the attention of their ridiculously wealthy peers or whomever they want to buy influence, not from the entire world population with every brainfart they produce. It’s just the very top few has a hard time avoiding it because they’re on top of the lists and stand out. Kanye or trump are still * far* away from that wealthiest top. Look at the list of 1bn-80bn worth person: many you’ll barely have heard of before, if at all. It gets even more so if you ditch the Anglo-Saxon centered view on the list and look at the most wealthy people in China, Middle East etc

            • casmael@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              11 months ago

              Not convinced cows look a whole lot like maps tho they have too many legs etc

    • duckCityComplex@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      38
      ·
      11 months ago

      This thing is huge, it does 0-60 in under 3 seconds, has sharp angles, and its styling does not seem to target the sensible end of the market… It’s like an industrial strength pedestrian destroyer.

      • chitak166@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        11 months ago

        It’s actually a pussy-magnet.

        Even the pasty-facediest of incels will have no problems getting laid showing up in one of these bad boys.

        It’s just how the world works 🤷

        • crapwittyname@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          11 months ago

          I hear it has preprogrammed wait times for replying to text messages from females based on the redpill algorithm.

          • Tosti@feddit.nl
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            11 months ago

            Comon… sarcasm is not always obvious… but his comment was sarcasm. It has to be. I choose to believe it is.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          11 months ago

          I would like to hear from the women of Lemmy- how many of you would have sex with a man just because they drove a Cybertruck?

  • xX_fnord_Xx@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    ·
    11 months ago

    It looks exactly like a ‘rad car’ that I doodled in my social studies notebook after slamming two bottles of Robitussin.

  • hardcoreufo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    39
    ·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • imaqtpie@lemmy.myserv.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      ·
      11 months ago

      I’m pretty sure it actually is significantly more dangerous. The front end of traditional pickups will still crumple and absorb a great deal of force. If the cybertruck is more rigid and the sharp edges have a potential to gash pedestrians on impact, that’s two factors that don’t apply to current pickups.

      • Zetta@mander.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        11 months ago

        I don’t actually know the ride height but it looks like the cyber truck has a much lower nose when driving on normal roads compared to a lot of trucks, so while it may be very stiff, maybe it’ll just launch you over the hood.

        • weew@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          The shorter and lower nose should improve visibility too. Regular pickups have a blind spot as large as an entire daycare center.

    • SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      25
      ·
      11 months ago

      Your wording makes it sound like the existence of even more dangerous trucks somehow excuses this dangerous truck. Both the 4 ft wall and the sharp metal blade edges are dangerous and irresponsible designs.

      • hardcoreufo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        11 months ago

        I’m not excusing it at all, I think it’s one of the worst vehicles ever made, too big, heavy and fast. People are for sure gonna crash these beasts.

        What I meant was I’d like to see traditional truck designs that have millions of vehicles on the road be scrutinized before the 10 cyber trucks. You’re way more likely to be hit by a regular truck which has a deadly design than a cyber truck just because of how many more are on the road.

        • SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          14
          ·
          11 months ago

          “I don’t like x but it can’t be worse than y” is a construction which serves to minimize how bad something is. Instead, let’s scrutinize both: “This cyber truck is ridiculously dangerous. While we’re at it, let’s also regulate the 4 feet tall wall of grill on other trucks.”

    • jonne@infosec.pub
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      11 months ago

      And those are largely banned from the EU as well. The issue is the lack of regulation in the US, it’s killing pedestrians daily.

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      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

        • MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          11 months ago

          This is not true.

          Anti collision systems of various sorts have been around for over a decade. The problem space is minuscule compared to self driving, and almost all car manufacturers offer both forward and reverse collision detection at this point.

          In fact I think EU is making it a requirement soon.

          • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            11 months ago

            Detecting a pedestrian where you would want to lower the front vs say a deer or moose (or other vehicle for that matter) where you don’t want to lower it is more complicated.

            Better to just not build the vehicle out of sharp polygons like it needs to be rendered on a Super Nintendo with FX chip.

            • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              11 months ago

              You could only enable the lowering in pedestrian heavy areas (city) assuming they legit can’t tell a moose apart.

              You aren’t going to find many moose in downtown NYC ;)

              Again, nothing to do with shape, this would be a good feature for any air suspension vehicle that can detect a pedestrian.

              Edit: And I’m not sure we need to worry as much about city deer, they are small enough.

              Edit: Also if they CAN detect a moose, they should do the opposite and raise the front.

          • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            11 months ago

            Any car with AEB has this capability which is a lot of cars ya.

            I don’t know how fast they can lower the vehicle though? There isn’t a lot of time between when AEB kicks off to slow you down and the accident.

  • MyDogLovesMe@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    37
    ·
    11 months ago

    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…

  • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    28
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    “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!”

    • irotsoma@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      11 months ago

      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

  • filister@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    28
    ·
    11 months ago

    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

  • Species8472@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    11 months ago

    Safety concerns…who would have thought? This cannot be an actual recent concern. Everybody could see the safety issues from the day it was unveiled…

    Good thing safety regulation is the reason why we hopefully will not see this monstrosity on EU roads.

    • emptiestplace@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      11 months ago

      I’m just so amused by your inclusion of ‘hopefully’ in that sentence… hard to know what to expect when the whole world is a bit

    • laurelraven
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      It’s not a recent concern, it’s been talked about since the initial reveal

  • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • grte@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    11 months ago

    If you ever felt like your truck didn’t look and drive enough like a prep counter, Elon Musk has got your back.

  • Muhr@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    11 months ago

    Pretty easy to solve. Just pay those experts to stfu. Shouldn’t be a problem for musk