A fatal Tesla Cybertruck crash in the San Francisco Bay Area early Wednesday morning killed three people and left another injured.
Tesla’s giant “refrigerator on wheels” car model quickly became the butt of jokes after the company finally began delivering the futuristic trucks in November of 2023. The polarizing design made the trucks become darlings of social media and online video engagement overnight. But the truck’s ascent into the cultural zeitgeist helped reveal an almost immeasurable amount of flaws in the final product that shipped out.
The cool-looking aerodynamic wheel covers caused damage to the tires; the stainless-steel body panels became pitted and rusted in the rain; the massive lightbar had alignment issues; the body panels were not rounded out — and their edges were so sharp, you could shave vegetables against them; the “frunk” panel had no sensor to detect whether or not an object would be in the way of it closing … which, combined with those razor-sharp edges meant a finger could easily be cut off. These are only the ones that came to mind.
The Cybertruck’s stainless-steel body is famously bullet-proof and gives people peace of mind from shopping cart bumps in Target parking lots. However, this bare body material — a type of metal that hasn’t been used in such a way since the DeLoreans of the 1980s, which garnered a massive fandom after Back to the Future was released in 1985, featuring the vehicle — has proven controversial.
Many automotive journalists, car-safety experts, and YouTube creators have gone as far as to say Cybertuck’s stainless-steel body makes it perform in “horrifying” ways during crash testing.
On Wednesday, November 27th, three people died in a “fiery crash” in an SF Bay Area car crash involving one of Tesla’s Cybertrucks.
According to Piedmont police, the fiery crash occurred just after 3 a.m. on Hampton Road in the Bay Area city. First responders arrived on the scene to find a Cybertruck — the front of the vehicle wrapped around a tree and the vehicle completely charred. It was reported that an emergency notification recorded by an iPhone pinged a nearby emergency call center and prompted first responders to the scene within minutes of the crash. However, firefighters noted the blaze was “too intense” to appropriately put out when they reached the crash; the blaze was completely snuffed out at 3:16 a.m. by Piedmont firefighters.
Four people were apparently in the vehicle when the Cybertruck jumped a curb and collided with a tree, the front of it folding around it. One occupant was flung through the windshield and pronounced dead upon discovery in an area close to the crash; two other individuals were also pronounced dead at the scene; the lone survivor of the crash was transported to a nearby hospital for treatment for burns, cuts, and blows from the crash, and they remain hospitalized as of publishing; all four occupants were friends and part of the 2023 graduating class of Piedmont High School.
Local police and the California Highway Patrol (CHP) note that speed played a factor in the crash, and an investigation is currently underway to determine the cause of the crash. As of publishing, the Piedmont crash remains the deadliest recorded yet involving a Cybertruck.
What’s also undeniable is how the Cybertruck’s lack of crumple zones and overly rigid body structure aided in the crash’s deadly nature.
Ironic as it may seem, a car can be constructed too tough and made more dangerous, as a result. The law of motion denotes that an object will not change its motion unless a force acts on it. In the scenario of a car crash, a vehicle’s collision with an object, be it stationary or otherwise, will result in it changing direction, stance, and position. But it’s just as important to realize that the energy created by such a crash doesn’t disappear — it’s merely absorbed and transformed into heat. “Energy is neither created nor destroyed,” per the laws of physics.
How does this all influence vehicle design and production? Crumple zones and the use of malleable metals. Most modern-day four-wheeled cars have two crumple zones, one in the front and one in the rear, each design absorbs and distributes energy from head-on collisions. Within those crumple zones exist dozens, if not hundreds, of engineering quirks, made to help a vehicle absorb the impact; everything from give-points in welds made in structure frames to the foldability of aluminum body panels helps absorb and dissipate energy from a crash before it reaches occupants.
Vehicles from car makers like Toyota and Volvo often score high marks from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), with some models scoring near-perfect scores in crash-safety testing. Even Tesla’s own Model S and Model X, which were made with aluminum body panels, have historically performed well in these tests.
Tesla’s own Cybertruck hasn’t. Because, unlike other models in its lineup, the Cybertuck was designed to “look cool” above anything else. And that’s a problem.
The rigidity of its stainless-sleep body panels remains shockingly sound in car crashes. They have barely any give, and show little, if any, evidence of deforming. The panels mostly “fold,” rather than crumple, the latter process capable of absorbing much more body stress and energy than the former. Ostensibly, it’s cool — a party trick, you could say. But what this means for the occupants is all that energy unabsorbed by the lack of a malleable crumple zone travels to them … inside the cabin.
The Cybertruck’s stainless-steel body is so inflexible that Tesla had to engineer specific assembly line robots to bend the metal into body frame parts … which later required welds to hold them in place. If you were to remove the welding from certain Tesla Cyberturck panels, they would shoot right out and back straightened.
What these stainless-steel body panels also mean is the car’s entire body is incredibly, worryingly rigid. In the presence of a head-on collision, there’s very little chassis bending; in the case of a car crash, the presence of chassis bending is actually desirable, because it shows energy from the crash being absorbed; in fact, some front-on crash test videos involving Tesla Cybertrucks show the cars’ rear axles snapping, showing how inefficient the cars are at absorbing and distributing energy from a crash. That’s almost unheard of in front-end collision testing.
Tesla Cybertruck occupants are subject to so much unabsorbed energy that rear passengers are flown into the back of the driver’s seat. The driver and side passenger aren’t any better off, being thrust into airbags at unusually fast speeds.
Mind you: These alarming safety concerns were all exposed with Tesla Cybertrucks crash tested at speeds 35 mph or below. A crash at 65 mph would produce four times as much energy. We’ll let your imagination do the mental gymnastics around what damage that could mean.
May this SF Bay Area Cybertruck crash serve as an unfortunate and truly catastrophic example of why “cool” isn’t always practical … or safe.
