Tesla Cybertruck's stiff structure, sharp design raise safety concerns

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.
- 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.
- 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.
I thought a car had to have that before it went on sale?
- 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.
Yeah have you seen the footage it’s as stiff as the rod up musks butt hole
Here you go:

https://youtu.be/SQjoDV6vDaI
- That's... computer generated. BeamNG maybe?
- Looked convincing at first, but it felt too clean- Then at 7 seconds in, you can watch a white panel clip straight through the door and windshield lol
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  
  https://piped.video/SQjoDV6vDaI
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- Wow looks unsafe as fuck!!
- Thanks for sharing! How do I know if this is good or bad haha
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?
- Because they wanted it to be bullet proof.
- 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.
- That actually would be on brand for Musk.
- 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.

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.

Sorry about that.
- Holy shit you were the driver?
Yeah cars should definitely not be colliding with people. The results are horrible. Welcome to civilization with cars, where our overall strategy for minimizing the death cars to do pedestrians is based on collision avoidance rather than making car-pedestrian collisions safe.
- Making car-pedestrian collisions safe is a ridiculous idea failed to doom from the start. Cars are big and hard, people are small and squishy.
  
  I think the key is to prevent cars and people from coexisting as much as possible.

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/

Brings back some “carmageddon” nostalgia though.
- Yeah, this cybertruck would fit right into the game.
- Hmm, that is a game I haven't played in two decades.

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.

"Raises"?

That was a concern the day it was unveiled years ago

Didn't expect them to act this stupid. They have no damn solution for this mammoth of a tin box, exerting pressures way above what is needed to obliterate any living thing at speed.
- The solution is to only sell them in the USA which has no pedestrian safety standards
- Yup, that’s vehicles for ya
Yeah but actual production models only became available Dec 1st, and production is still low until sometime next year without any additional delays.
- Don't they have to safety test these things before they sell them?

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

You should take Tesla to court for stealing your idea
- And get the judge to make them pay damages in the form of pallets of Robitussin!

That front trunk just looks like a guillotine

deleted

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 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.

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.
- 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.
- So are we really contemplating pickup trucks as more safe in a pedestrian collision because they have crumple zones?
  
  When a truck hits a pedestrian and the front of the truck crumples, is that pedestrian okay?
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.
- 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.
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.
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
- I'm pretty sure Tesla is devoid of any technology that detects pedestrians.
- Detecting that collision is on the same order of difficulty as self-driving cars.

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.

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

Who would buy this piece of crap? Like really?

Possibly unpopular opinion but I think the Cybertruck is about as dumb-looking as most any other truck on the market. 4 big doors, more cabin than bed, trucks in general are all goofy looking parking lot crawlers nowadays
Shit on me if you must but I actually like the look and features of the car. However I likely wouldn't buy a Tesla in general
- It could be a good vehicle, if it was built by someone else.
  
  The past few years have revealed that while Tesla have the tech, they lack the basic precision manufacturing that other automakers mastered decades ago.
- I agree, features are nice and I also would enjoy trying to drive one. But in a for a long term usage, I bet the reliability will be an issue and also some Tesla shenanigans such as 20k for the battery.
  
  Thing is: I personally don’t give a shit about features. I like simple and basic vehicles that last for many years.
- You’d like the “features” of any car, it’s why they’re features. It’s the tradeoffs that actually matter.
  
  And yeah, it looked cool at first, but that’s really just because of its uniqueness. From an actual design perspective, it just looks…stupid.
Tools
A lot of people. Bunch of my coworkers were hyped about the release.
- I'll bet there are going to be some great deals for these on the used market when whatever cool factor there is collapses.
- Is it because they want to use it for sth or just because it’s "cool"?
Fellow narcissists.
I think the main market was supposed to be like a utility vehicle. It's got some nice specs for actual work purposes for an electric vehicle, while saving money by not making a pretty body.

I don't know why some people like the look and want it for recreational use.
- It was supposed to be a utility vehicle but it genuinely failed. If I wanted a utility vehicle, I would get Toyota Land cruiser 79. For a utility vehicle, you need something reliable, something which does not have 246 useless electronic features and something you can drive while wearing gloves (you cannot so this with tesla considering every setup is made via the display).
  
  Tbh, to me is seems like a car which is made purely for city and for the ones who just want to show off. It definitely is not a proper workhorse.
  
  If I wanted a utility vehicle (which would be abused), I would look for:
  
  big payload
  
  3 pedals
  
  hand brake
  
  steering wheel
  
  4x4, diff locks , transfer case
  
  gear lever
  
  Nothing more is truly needed because it just adds the probability of failure.

"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
we've combined the Orphan Crushing Machine and the Torment Nexus
To be fair, Tesla Autopilot probably already did that.
This sounds like something BeastChild would say in a video.

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

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.

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

But, like a prep counter, the blood washes off easily

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

How long till these things are all sitting in random scrappers in the Mojave?

Meme car is real.

Don't have to pay pain and suffering to the dead

Rasied this being an issue on the Marces Brown video, the finishing on those panels is pretty backyard with exposed edges of pretty sharp steel. I also think the steel is going to look like shit after a couple of years when the coatings fade off. Also bulletproof panels don't necessarily lead to safe crumple zones which doesn't bode well for them in Europe at least. A lot of design choices for people who are scared of driving, which usually makes them really bad for use in a public space.

Marces Brown

Marques Brownlee

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?

So it’s an EV Delorian.

No shizsle. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand the inherent problem of this flaw in the car design.

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.

who the fuck cares

Safety experts as well as pedestrians and cyclists. It's right there in black and white.
- i already hate cars, and especially unnecessary civilian trucks. i do not fucking care about elon musk drama. it's so fucking boring. i don't need to laugh at the cyber truck again. it's destroyed this website.
  
  this article doesn't belong in a fucking technology sub.

People are going to be pissed when they find out cyclists lose in collisions against any vehicle, not just prototype electric trucks.

Good argument for separate infrastructure.
- And using it.
  
  There are certain streets in my city that are multi-lane, paired one-ways, they're major routes with a LOT of traffic.
  
  There are parallel streets that make the same connections, that only see local traffic, people who live on those blocks.
  
  Where do the cyclists like to ride, with the cars doing 25 at most, or with the cars on the 45 mph street where people speed up to 60 at times?
  
  Cyclists (as a group) love to shout about the rules of the road saying they can be there, but so many disregard those same rules when it's convenient.
  
  Running red lights/stop signs (because it takes effort to start again! Wait, I thought one of the arguments was it's good exercise?), riding against traffic, (bad in the city, but I think is the better approach for rural areas), etc.
  
  You (the royal "you") wanna ride a bike? Good for you. I'll do my best to make the road safe for you, but it's a two-way street. Work with me, not against me.
  
  And I've been a motorcyclist for 30+ years now, dealing with some similar issues (especially that we're not visible to drivers). People in cars will make mistakes, it's up to me to ensure they see me, that they know what my intentions are. Most drivers really have no idea what to expect out of a two-wheeler, with or without an engine. That needs to be acknowledged and considered with every interaction.
  
  Edit: aww I offended a bunch of cyclists who do these things, but don't have the balls to comment because they know this is all true.
That doesn't mean some vehicles aren't much worse than others.
- It actually does. Cyclists are generally fucked, as in fully fucked, when colliding with any vehicle. I don’t see any reason to separate the categories here.
- Yeah, I don't think even a cybertruck can stand up against a fully-loaded semi.
You’re going to be pissed when the first loan payment comes due and you still feel empty
- Bro I'm the cyclist in this thought experiment
Hell, motorcyclists lose, even with 1000lbs of bike.

Something called physics can't be bypassed. Worrying about making cars less dangerous for pedestrians is a foolish endeavor at this point. I really don't see it making that much difference when you look at the mass differential.

Deforming plastic bumpers aren't going to make much difference when they just compress with so little pressure that hard parts of the car are still impacting human bodies.
- This is a uniquely American problem, and therefore something we’re doing is wrong. Why just accept that our streets are so dangerous? Don’t you want safer streets?

Cars made of metal do more damage when running down pedestrians than cars made of nerf do. Is the solution to make all cars out of nerf, or to stop running down pedestrians?

The correct answer is to copy the netherlands in every possible way. You add physical impediments to your transit corridor to make it safer for people and cars to coexist.

Grade separated bike and walk lanes.

Sidewalks that are contiguous, i.e dont dip down to the level of the street. If the sidewalk stays level, pedestrians and bikes cross faster while the sidewalk serves as an inante speed bump where pedestrian traffic crosses roads.

No right on red. This is a leading cause of pedestrian/bike impacts.

Traffic lights not across the road, but next to the road. This keeps driver vision focused in front of their car where pedestrian cross, not looking far off.

Narrow driving lanes. These force cars to slow down, lowering pedestrian impact speeds which drastically reduce mortality. This goes hand in hand with seperated bike/walk lanes.

Real pedestrian islands in wide roads that favor pedestrian crossings. They need to be deisgned for safety and be biased for pedestrians crossing.
- Almost like putting the pedestrian first. Unfortunately that is the opposite of America. In good ol USA the car has right of way. That's why you have jaywalking as a crime. In other parts of the world the pedestrian has right of way and so car has to stop for them.
  
  Would need to upend the whole American system
- Sidewalks that are contiguous, i.e dont dip down to the level of the street.
  
  How do you accommodate for people in wheelchairs? That's why they dip in the U.S.
I agree with this, however I suppose accidents will be inevitable.

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.

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.
- Unless I'm mistaken, crumpling is meant to protect the driver and passengers. Not pedestrians, cyclists, or anyone else outside the 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
- Crumple zones are for vehicle to vehicle impacts. They have nothing to do with pedestrian safety.
- 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.
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.
- Bigger size = bigger profit margin. We'd be a lot further towards carbon neutral if cars hadn't grown to ridiculous average sizes while engine efficiency improved a lot.
- why not both?
  
  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.
A bit of a straw man argument, but also based. They should go after all production vehicles and require that they meet pedestrian safety standards or that ownership requires additional licensing/training.
- In the EU they do, and the Cybertruck has already failed the pedestrian safety requirements there.
  
  The NHTSA is just now starting to talk about "rating" vehicles for pedestrian safety in the US, but to my knowledge there is no actual rule or mandate yet. We just inherit whatever is designed into vehicles that are also sold in the EU, if those vehicles happen to be sold here.

"The big problem there is if they really make the skin of the vehicle very stiff by using thick stainless steel, then when people hit their heads on it, it's going to cause more damage to them,"

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.

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.
- Late reply but to specify, the crumple zones dissipating energy to protect the occupants, but in part the situation you’re describing airbags do a great job at preventing people from hitting the steering wheel / walls.
  
  A very very advanced harness system might compensate a little for a lack of crumple zones during a very rapid deceleration collision. The issue isn’t so much as stopping someone from but being thrown around in the car, seat belts do that, but nothing can stop one’s internal organs from doing the same thing inside their body. So when a body stops during a rapid deceleration, internal organs still try to move. This movement tears everything, most notably one’s aorta and a torn aorta means death with no possible chance of survival.
  
  A small tear in one’s aorta and one may survive long enough for emergency services to show up, a bad one and they will have bleed out before a 911 call taker has time to answer a call for help.
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.
- It genuinely scares me that they are so confident in them being right that they didn't stop for one second to try and understand what the sentence actually means.
- This will happen with any car. Mass x velocity wins every time. A car would need a giant balloon around it to transfer energy into the pedestrian slowly enough to not injure them significantly.
  
  And what "regular aluminum car"? Cars aren't, by and large, aluminum. They're still mostly steel. Not that it matters, aluminum body panels are less flexible than equivalent steel panels. The places where aluminum is heavily used are things like engines, suspension components, substructures, etc. There are very few cars using aluminum extensively in the body. Ford pickups use it in the bed, Jeeps use it for the engine hood. There are others, but making aluminum body parts is more complex than steel that's easily stamped, and assembly is different.
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.
- Want to make a wager about how long it is before someone is sliced in half by a cyber truck?
  
  I’d put money on it doesn’t happen in the next ten years.
Found Elon!
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.

Tesla Cybertruck's stiff structure, sharp design raise safety concerns - experts