“If you have an argument with another car, you will win,” Elon Musk said during Tesla’s November 30 Cybertruck delivery event. This is much of the problem that traffic crash analysts are having with the preliminary crash videos released by Tesla. Cars with crumple zones will deform around their passengers, dissipating the impact and dulling the forces some before they reach a soft and squishy human body.
Tesla has touted how stiff the Cybertruck’s angular stainless steel ‘exoskeleton’ is, which is the key point of the problem many of these analysts have with the truck. If the body shell doesn’t deform, how is it protecting the people inside? And for that matter, is it actively hostile to people outside?
Reuters recently spoke to six road safety experts, getting their preliminary analysis of the crash test videos Tesla released at the delivery event. These videos don’t have any data attached, and Tesla has been reticent to release any crash data for the Cybertruck, so these are visual analyses only. I’m personally not an expert, but when I saw the crashes for the first time, my immediate reaction was that the test footage was not reassuring.
“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,” said Adrian Lund, the former president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
If the truck can take a sledgehammer to the door and not deform, just imagine what it might do to a human head at speed. In my minds eye, I’m picturing something like Gallagher and his watermelons.
“We hope Tesla don’t bring this vehicle to Europe. A vehicle of this size, power and huge weight will be lethal to pedestrians and cyclists in a collision,” the Brussels-based nonprofit European Transport Safety Council said in a statement.
There are concerns about the truck from every perspective. Not only will it be potentially damaging to the people inside the truck in a crash, but it could be deadly for pedestrians and cyclists. Musk himself already said the Cybertruck will “win the argument” against you in your car, but to really drive that point home, here’s what David Friedman, former acting head of the NHTSA had to say about it.
“If you’re in a crash with another vehicle that has a crumple zone and your car is more stiff, then their cars are going to crush and yours is resistant.”
In a recent post on Twitter, Elon said he was “highly confident” that his blunt-nosed wedge of an electric truck would be “much safer per mile” than traditional pickup trucks, speaking in direct reference to the Ford F-150 in his post. He claims not only that the Cybertruck will be safer for occupants, but for pedestrians as well. As of yet, the Cybertruck has not received an NHTSA NCAP crash safety rating, so we’ll have to wait until that happens to know for sure. Based on the crash testing we’ve seen so far, however, we’re going to be skeptical. And with good reason.