The Cybertruck Is Even Worse Than We Thought
How could it get any worse?
Musk’s horrific fridge of a “swasticar” has been ridiculed from day one. And rightfully so, it is a moronic vehicle that only makes sense to the ketamine-drenched brain of a billionaire who desperately needs to touch grass and stay off his Nazi-filled social media site. Even those who, for unfathomable reasons, enjoyed the initial concept have to admit that it hasn’t met that design brief. WhistlinDiesel has shown that the Cybertruck is held together with plastic clips and is so fragile that it is simply unsuitable as a work truck — so much for Musk’s “indestructible” claims. As such, it’s not surprising that the Cybertruck is an unmitigated sales flop! After only selling 40,000 units in 2024, Tesla has already started scaling down the Cybertruck production line, despite Musk targeting 500,000 sales per year. And, it turns out, the Cybertruck is far, far worse than we thought. It could be one of the most deadly vehicles ever produced, even worse than the infamous Ford Pinto.
You might not have heard of the Pinto and its notorious past. Back in the ’70s, Ford wanted a compact, super affordable car for the US market, which gave birth to the Pinto. Ford had to cut some corners to get the price down to the equivalent of less than $15,000 in today’s money. One of these corners was the fuel tank, which was mounted behind the rear axle and without any protection. Ford knew that even a minor rear collision could rupture the tank, causing a deadly fire. They also knew that fixing this would only cost $11 per vehicle, about $70 in today’s money. However, Ford’s higher-ups sent a memo that prevented this fix, as they figured it would be far cheaper to keep the fault and pay off victims and their mourning families.
This became a national scandal, even before this memo was found, as the Pinto was rightfully branded the most dangerous vehicle on the road.
But some analysis by FuelArc has found that the Cybertruck has a far higher risk of death by fire than the Pinto!
During the first year of sales, the 34,438 Cybertrucks Tesla delivered caused five fatalities as a result of vehicular fires. By comparison, the 3.1 million Pintos Ford produced caused 27 deaths through vehicular fires over a decade. If you crunch the numbers, the Pinto had 0.85 fire fatalities per 100,00 units, while the Cybertruck currently stands at 14.52 per 100,000 units! That means the Tesla is 17 times more likely to kill its occupants by fire than a car that literally had a petrol bomb strapped to its bumper!
When the Pinto scandal broke out, Ford was flooded with lawsuits from grieving families who had lost their loved ones due to Ford’s immoral actions. Despite a jury awarding these plaintiffs the equivalent of nearly $900 million in today’s money in damages, a judge later reduced it to just $22 million in today’s money. In total, the Pinto scandal cost Ford the equivalent of over $44 million in today’s money, and severely damaged its reputation and sales for decades.
Now, it is all but confirmed that Elon Musk was heavily involved in the design of the Cybertruck, and countless leaks and Tesla whistleblowers have highlighted how Musk ignores engineers’ safety advice, so Tesla likely has its own Pinto memo floating around somewhere. After all, FuelArc and others have pointed out that the issue is the electronically opening doors with hidden manual overrides, which effectively trap occupants in the Cybertruck during a battery fire, as there is no power. So, is there a damning email where Musk prioritised his own nonsensical aesthetic choices over the safety of the customer?
Either way, Tesla could be facing a monumental lawsuit if this issue isn’t addressed. The overwhelming risk of death, the vehicle’s high price, the obviously flawed design choices of the Cybertruck, and Musk’s long history of ignoring safety concerns could make for a class-action lawsuit like no other. If you take what the Jury awarded the plaintiffs in the Pinto case as precedent, it isn’t out of reality that Tesla could be facing tens of billions of dollars in fines.
Will this actually happen? With today’s broken judicial system, probably not. But the reputational damage will be immeasurable. As such, this is even more evidence that Tesla is circling the drain and limping towards death.
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Sources: FuelArc, Futurism, Electrek, The Guardian, Jalopnik, The Spokesman-Review, Justia