Inside the fiery, deadly crashes involving the Tesla Cybertruck: Cybertrucks have locked passengers inside and burned so hot they’ve disintegrated drivers’ bones.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/18/tesla-cybertruck-crashes-battery-firesOpen linkView original on lemmus.org825
Comments202
Sounds like a great way to fake your death. The only problem is that everyone will think you died driving a Tesla.
Good point. Back to the drawing board.
No one's going to believe a drawing board disappeared a body.
Ehhh, you'd be surprised what the modern drawing board can do.
I present you the drAIwing board, our latest break through!
It... also costs
100kEdit: sorry, sorry, 70k — much better
I mean if you're faking your death I don't think you're planning on paying off the loan
Yeah, I guess that's true
Make sure you take appropriate steps to insulate your spouse or family from the debt, depending on your local laws.
Or dispose of evidence.
Or BOTH !
you're right. no one would believe that
They also withstand emergency responders and the occupant's attempts to escape.
Chances of you experiencing the apocalypse - Zero
Chances you will get trapped in an Cybercuck and be unable to get out - Not zero
Elon is building both the "apocalypse-proof" (they are not) truck and the apocalypse (he really is)
When they say "apocalypse-proof", what they actually mean is that the pedestrians outside are protected from the localised internal apocalypse occurring within the vehicle.
And the apocalypse will have working charging stations.
Will a tesla even start if the internet is down?
Jokes aside. You can build you own solar charging station for a few grand.
Not a lot of people can build their own oil extraction and refinement system in their backyard.
On the flip side, might be a good time for everyone to learn about wood gasifiers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator
Let's face face it. The most likely apocalypse is an economic crash brought on by the kind of crop of idiots. Not sure how a car is going to help with that.
He meant apocalypse proof from the INSIDE, duh ! If all hell breaks loose inside, it won't get out, and neither will you !
Don't Teslas have the highest crash fatality stats on the road or something? Terrible company.
Tech Bytes: Tesla takes dubious crown with worst crash fatality rate by brand, according to new analysis
Cybertrucks are 17 times more likely to kill you in a fiery way than the Ford Pinto, the previous record holder.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/report-cybertruck-safety-ford-pinto/
I'm not in any way trying to downplay how bad the cyber-dumpster is, but is that an adequate sample size to extrapolate the fiery-death rate? The article says 17 times the rate of the Pinto, but it was only 5 total fires.
I mean they made millions of Pintos so yeah
Different person, but the Pinto controversy was overblown. Media hype made it an issue when it had similar incident rates with other vehicles at the time.
Ford Pinto - Wikipedia https://share.google/A9xMle5N02j1gPmCl
The biggest issue with the Pinto was not the Pinto itself, it was how Ford discussed the potential issues with it internally. It was their very well documented preference for money over protecting human life that caused the controversy.
We know this really happens all the time, at all companies and in all industries, but Ford was punished for saying the quiet part out loud (amongst themselves) and getting caught doing it. We are all supposed to at least put on a show of human lives being more important than money, and Ford failed to put on the show, and for that they were punished.
We still don't care about human life, but at least we all felt better about it afterwards.
There's an episode of Swindled all about how Ford knew this was a flaw and allowed it to happen so that they could compete in the lower end market.
huh, TIL. Thanks!
So it's just 17 times more likely to burn you to death than average cars.
Average car of the 1970s.
that implies the rate at which CTs kill occupants is even higher than that when compared to modern cars, right?
With 'murican healthcare prices the fatality rate is a feature.
You even get a free cremation. Saves time and money!
God bless the free market
But maybe they have the lowest crash rate?
So like, crashes cost money right? Someone is responsible. Someone has to pay.
But if everyone dies in an inferno, then nobody is responsible. Who can pay? They're all dead! What medical bills? What repairs? It's all a write off.
Sounds like a high mortality rate with low accident rate is an absolute profitable win! Free market baby!
According to the article they have higher crash rates and fatalities because the drivers are worse. The cars themselves actually rate fairly high in safety standards.
That being said, I think the safety evaluations are flawed and don’t consider things like electronic locks.
I can’t fathom having my husband burn to death so badly that he’s just .. evaporated. But then again I can’t imagine my husband ever wanting a cybercuck so there’s also that.
I can't imagine my husband.
I can't imagine
I can't
I
My wife and I are in need of a truck since we moved to a rural area and need one for stuff like trash disposal and whatnot. We've decided to get something practical like a hundai santafe or honda ridgeline
Comment of the week right here Username makes it even better
Do either of those evaporate your bones?
Sadly, no
First, "unique" design? It's an ugly callback to the wedge-shaped cars of the 80s. It looks like a DeLorean model that refused to render properly, and the dev just went with it.
Second, the decision to exclude door handles is fucking mental. It's a mundane feature that cars have had since the Model T. If they wanted to make a pickup, its handles should resemble those found on a typical pickup. If it's "aesthetics" they're after (which shouldn't matter when it comes to a pickup), some of the best looking cars have had no problem including door handles into its design.
The reason to eliminate door handles that Tesla and others typically give is aerodynamic efficiency. Granted there are other bigger aerodynamic problems. gestures at the rest of the fucking truck
For internal door handles?
I thought they did have internal door handles but they're hidden away. The problem is often they're difficult to get to even when the car is completely intact.
When it comes to driving a self-propelled crematorium, I'd primarily be concerned about the internal door handles.
I was thinking of the external ones which aren't default exposed
That was always Musk bullshit. Flush mechanical handles were a thing in the 70s.
Everything about a Tesla interior is cost-savings masquerading as innovation. Actually most of these touch screen focused modern cars. It’s cheaper to produce than tactile buttons.
Optimized for flatulence.
That's just nonsense justification they came up with after the fact. Ferraris have door handles, so clearly they're not much of an issue.
Anyway the car isn't going to exceed 80 miles an hour anyways so aerodynamics barely comes into it.
The improvement removing the handles is there, but negligible. Especially considering the safety implications. Didn't China ban flush door handles for safety reasons?
Yeah, but that literally just happened last month and doesn't take effect until January 2027. It's not like they did that years ago because they saw it coming.
Aerodynamics was obviously not a concern in the process of designing a vehicle that has (checks notes) literal corners.
Lmao
It is a "Deplorean"
How is this a perfectly valid statement about the worlds richest man's car company without us beating him to death with hammers/ seeing how many of those baseball sized steel balls he can handle?
“Unique” here refers to the fact that every other car is built pretty much the same way in as much first responders are concerned, and that makes them predictable and fairly easy to get out of while cybertrucks are strong enough and door-handleless enough to be incredibly dangerous(while also not being strong enough to do most of what they promise).
Free cremation — it’s a service!
You could almost say it's like being put into an oven.
I mean you can just say that if you really want
Feature, not a bug.
CaaS
It will be monetised soon enough
Popup on the screen:
Your Tesla is on fire, escape is no longer possible as your subscription to "Escape Hatch" has expired. In order to enable "FlameOn (tm) mode" for rapid immolation, please approve the one time payment of $4,206.90
ouch oof my bones
You have 30 seconds to escape your car
You have 10 seconds
Your car has been incinerated
Your car has burned your bones to ash
You have 30 minutes to collect your ash
That's what futuristic hidden door handles get you. Nice and crispy.
Not all of them act the same way. We have the hidden handles on our 26 Equinox EV but it still pivots open if you press on the opposite side of pulling to act as a normal handle.
"Burned into a charcoal because noone around knew how to sodomize door handle into cooperation." Would fit well on the tombstone
That's a similar method to the Tesla Model 3 and Y.
The S and X had motorized handles that retracted.
The Cybertruck has no physical handles on the outside. It has a button on the B pillar that activates an electric release to pop the door open.
All of those methods are flush, but only one isn't visible to rescuers and can completely fail with a lack of power or motor failure with no physical external backup option.
The Ford Pinto wishes it was this deadly...
I daily a Fiero and don't think even at its worst point people burned inside trapped without handles.
I kinda love the Fiero tbh
Oh same, but they are not well built and the iron duke is shit. I have to have 3 of them to keep one on the road working. at least they are good on gas. One day I might do an EV conversion.
I wonder if the 2.2l from an S10 could be swapped in? Like an LS swap but more pathetic.
Likely but depends on the era. I wanted to do a TDI swap but it's like building a fiero onto a jetta more then an engine swap.
I think your fiero is from the post-Nader era in u.s. car manufacturing.
designed during, built after yes.
Cremation is a new feature. It'll be an extra $2500 and comes with a decision engine on whether you should live or die (door unlocking). Tesla knows, trust Elon.
its also a 100k coffin with a built in charcuterie machine, that can slice VENISON in half.
cybertruck is a built in crematorium and Coffin at the same time,elon makes nazi impressed.
self-cleaning/pyrolytic oven on wheels
creep cremator
Disposable too
When we finally start eating the rich, we will have readily available fires to cook them over.
Wasnt there a maga dude that blew up his cybertruck in front of a hotel?
So much has happened last few years.....
Cant wait til they start taking volunteers for the Mars rocket
Mars project cancelled, now aiming for
moonNebraska.The cybertruck actually burns so hot it destroys your soul. No afterlife for you!
Yeah, that happens at purchase.
FFS, design standards exist for a reason. Quit trying to reinvent the wheel, or car doors as it is here.
How in the fuck did a truck without a manual override for exiting the vehicle ever make it to market? Everything is broken.
IIRC it has a manual override, it's just stupidly hard to find.
Corruption.
same reason it's allowed to have those blinding headlights (headlight?) and those face impaling rear corners
Well, see, that's what you get for being a poor.
Solution is simple, you must buy the optional $700 Cyberhammer to bash out the glass (not a joke, there really is a cyber hammer for $700).
Elon's got it all figured out, 8D chess losers
Wasn't the point that the cyber hammer couldn't hurt the truck?
"We'll fix it in post, haha" says Musk at the end. What a smug prick.
These horrific deaths and injuries are tragic. I see too many schadenfreude comments here approving of people dying just because they chose to drive a vehicle most people don't like. If there is blame, it is not on the victims, but on Tesla and the regulators we trust to ensure minimum and obvious safety features.
Perhaps if we were just talking Teslas in general, but the cybertruck? I can't imagine any non-assholes buying and driving those. That thing is a statement, a fascist "own-the-libs" statement in particular.
Anybody that bought a cyber truck did so knowing full well Elon is a Nazi. They made their bed and now they can lie in it. No compassion at all for these selfish fucks.
The cybertruck was available to buy before he went full mask off. And not everyone is "in-touch" with everything.
Disgusting.
Felon Muskrat went full mask off way back in 2016 when he called child rescuers a Pedo. Go pound sand.
That wasn't "mask off", that was him being publicly petulant. That was him not knowing how to react to someone telling him "no". It was the start of the cracks in his pubic veneer. Most rational people would say his reaction to that situation was ridiculous and childish, but I would bet there's a good amount of people who still aren't aware of what he said about the rescuers.
His "mask off" moment was during the 2024 USA elections when he went full Nazi (openly).
Granted, there were always indications for people who knew what to pay attention to, but that's not most people.
Actually I just think it was projection for Epstein Island BS.
informed consumer making rational decisions fallacy we have all been there. still, it hits different to mock them when they’re still alive to reflect on their choices
I disapprove the Schadenfreude comments, but this is not merely a "vehicle most people don't like". It is a dangerous vehicle unnecessarily threatening health and even live of other members of the community, especially of children. There is a reason why it is not street legal in the EU.
I agree the EU regulators made the right call, and this vehicle should not be on the public streets anywhere until it can meet basic safety standards, both for the drivers and for the public.
anyone that bought a cybertruck did so knowing full well that it's a giant "fuck everybody but me" vehicle
I have no sympathy for them. their victims, yes. the owner, not at all.
That's how many people see it, but I know a few people that are entirely disconnected from "celeb culture" and the news in general, and just think the cybertruck is neat technology. And to be fair, putting aside the massive safety issues with it, it does have noteworthy technology that on their own are interesting.
And I think the cross section of people who are interested in the cybertruck, people who are not particularly intelligent, and who also have money are generally going to be the customer base. It's fine to criticize, but to say "no sympathy" when they die is gross.
sorry I should have added the alternative option of "is ignorant of the fact and should be expected to be able to figure that out"
if somebody won't think of how their actions affect others, fuck them.
Reminder to keep one of those window breaker hammers in your car.
Also don’t buy cars from megalomaniacal nazis.
Just to be clear so people don't think they are protected when they're not: those window strikers ONLY work if your car windows are TEMPERED glass. They are 100% useless on laminated glass. The Cybertruck's "unbreakable Armor Glass" is laminated.
Thanks for the info, I didn’t know that.
Oh, great, then when it catches fire, and you're going to die a certain fiery death, you can use it to bash yourself in the head to death for buying a SwastiKKKar.
Elon
‘Ere little darlin’ — don't shed no tear.
No, no body, no crime.
I feel like that needs to be a Weird Al Yankovic cover. Although he would not be so morbid
At this point if you’re still driving a swasticar, you deserve it.
Hey hey, just few years ago lefties were religiously buying teslas made by their prophet. What changed?
In terms of american choice of EVs, nothing, because our government is bought and doesn’t represent the people at all.
In terms of elongated muskrat lib palatability, he did the thing and took the mask off.
Honestly it was even before the Nazi salute. Dude went down the ketamine and red pill rabbit hole years before that and lost a lot of his left-leaning fanboys. It became super obvious at that point that he was just another sociopathic nepo baby grifter.
I’ve taken a couple uber rides in a Tesla and I wish they’d give you the option to select NOT THAT. I just stared at the stupid door button the whole time
"sorry but i wont climb into your death trap. i will wait for the next available driver."
POINT AND LAUGH
I do this every time I see one of those dorks driving one around.
The Tesla Crematoria
+$599 Tesla Seatbottom Urn available in 2 colors.
I don't understand why it doesn't have a door handle. I don't get it
Think like Steve Jobs. No buttons.
okay but it's a car so it needs buttons and levers and stuff
Tell that to Elon.
no, I don't want to talk to him
If I'm close enough to talk to him, I'm punching him.
No no, you see, humans don't have buttons or levers, so cars don't need them either.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-demanded-cameras-over-radar-in-self-driving-cars-nytimes-2021-12
Because consumers are impressed by pointless bullshit on cars.
We have yet to ask ourselves one simple question. Is this a bug or a feature?
That depends.
Is the driver Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?
Yes! This is why I hang out here. My day is made when an Emo Phillips joke is in the comments.
This punchline comment was voted best religious joke ever according to a 2005 online poll. And anyone posting the best religious joke ever, according to a 2005 online poll must possess a tremendous amount of humorous insight and knowledge. As far as I am concerned, that is way more cool than meeting some people from your local metropolitan area while on a cruise or a Mexico/Caribbean resort vacation.
A true Tesla them, no?
A literal dumpster fire.
Natural selection at work?
Unluckly, choosing big cars with very strong/resistant materiais as daily driver means any recklessness that results in accidents involving other drivers are more letal for the smaller car.
So choosing a cybertruck probably means you have better survival chances in crashes against smaller cars in general.
literal deathtrap
Seems the built-in grill feature needs a bit more work.
No you just rebrand it a built-in crematorium.
This honestly seems like the most practical outcome. It solves the problem. It’s not like they have family that are gonna care for these fucking Nazis when they’re dead. Turn them to ash and throw them in the junkyard with the car.
On the fiery side, we might have MAGA troops manning Tesla Tanks.
Damn near 100% of the owners. The Nazimobiles came out after Elon needed all that Saudi money to get him out of the hole he dug saying he'd buy Twitter and in turn started amplifying chud propaganda on Twitter at their request. Anyone with a preorder had an opportunity to cancel and get their money back to not support a fascist. Fuck 'em. Let them eat fire.
Zero sympathy for purchasing a vehicle from a fucking neo-Nazi.
Something something Ford Pinto
Ford pinto hold my beer
Finally, a reason to like Cybertrucks.
Ah, I see you are a fan of child bbqs. Those damn kids in the back deserve to suffer for the crimes of their parents after all.
😬
🤷
Honestly, it may not be drivable but you could set up mobile crematoriums for people's loved ones in a pop up format and make a tidy little business provided you can clear the $10k the truck is worth daily.
They're MAGAs, so...what's for dinner?
But it will act as a boat. Temporarily.
So now we know what to do with the
bodiesburnable items.Aww what a shame
And nothing of value was lost.
Warms my heart 🥰
In the western world, deaths from bananas to cyber trucks to rocket ships are tracked. And believe it or not for many of those things there is a threshold of deaths per month or year that is required before any safety concerns are invoked.
They have charts with actual numbers to decide on how many people need to get hurt before a stop sign at a street intersection gets installed. And how many deaths need to occur before those stop signs are upgraded to stop lights.
While I don't own a cyber truck or anything Tesla and never will. 5 deaths out of however many miles driven by the over 1/2 million cyber trucks that have been sold, is barely statistical noise.
*****Annual deaths from bananas is statistically insignificant. But strangely PubMed did have a German paper about a woman that evidently committed suicide by eating a very large number of bananas. Hyperkalemia is a real thing and there are people at high risk of it. But man, kidney failure is a very painful way to choose to die.
The one thing you are forgetting... Is that Tesla lobbies the regulatory agencies.
For another comparison, the cyber truck is 17 times more likely to burn you to death than the Ford Pinto, a car that is practically synonymous with fire.
They all lobby the regulatory agencies for the same things. Tesla ain't special there. Every auto manufacturer has formulas that they use to determine how many deaths cost them more than doing nothing does.
That is not how it works in the EU. The Cybertruck has never been street legal here, for a reason.
And that's fine that in the EU, Your roads, your choice.
Only 60,000 Cybertrucks have been sold. Not "half a million."
While the total number of deaths from fire may seem insignificant to you, it is a far greater death rate than major auto manufacturers usually tolerate.
In the 1970s, Ford had to recall the Pinto over 27 deaths out of 1.5 million units sold. That's 18 deaths per million units.
Cybertrucks are sitting at five known fire deaths per 60,000 units sold. That would be a ratio of 83 deaths per million units.
I see people make this point a lot but it's not about the number of deaths. It's about the manner in which they die. It's horrifying.
I won't argue with you over that. As an old retired medic, there are a great number of ways to die that are horrifying. And I've seen some of them.
The funny part is, the doors have a manual release on the inside, Tesla owners are just too dumb to read the user manual.
The not funny part is, the ones in the back are deep inside the bottom of the door, there's no possible way a child in a car seat could open the back door in an emergency.
Opening Doors with No Power https://share.google/NmVMGXKowzwXKUKxF
I have to say I am sick of having to give a safety briefing to passengers when they get a ride.
"If we crash and burn, the manual release is behind there" points
Why didnt they just put regular bloody handles on!?
Aesthetics
Sacrificing lives for aesthetics, pretty much sums it up and explains why this thing is not street legal in the civilised world.
Oh, yeah. Because the Cybertruck is so beautiful!
You might die for the look of it, but that is a risk elon is willing to take
Is this a joke? Who is this for? The same people who live in the resident evil house?
Children are normally in the back of a vehicle, please tell us the secret door with a fucking rip cord in it is somehow normal and the cooked children where clearly a "skill issue".
Hey, I just thought of a brilliant idea. Instead of sticking that under a mat under all the other shit that's probably stored in the storage pocket, maybe they could put it somewhere more easily accessible, like above the door pocket entirely. And instead of a steel cable to pull, maybe they could use some sort of lever that pulls the cable without needing to see it. And since that is so easy to access, the normal way of opening the door that requires power becomes redundant and could be removed to save costs.
Oh but the electronic opener also lowers the window slightly otherwise it'll break because the window makes a part of the seal and they couldn't design it in a way that would work with the normal window position? Why would you do that? So there's a chance that opening the door in winter will smash the window because sometimes those mechanisms freeze in the cold? Or do they constantly run heaters to avoid this?
It would never catch on, I mean think of how ugly it would look.
Also that level of over engineering with the windows would make a German blush, just peak backwards.
Chevrolet had the same problem. Boomers baked to death in their Corvettes because the battery died.
like, not a crash just the battery died and they decided not to break the glass on their fancy car?
Hot day, sitting in car, 72, he succumbed to the heat and died along with his dog. Battery cable was loose. There was a manual release, but reading manuals is woke.
interesting, got a link to this? thanks!
Texas Man and His Dog Found Dead After Becoming Trapped Inside Car https://share.google/7WgfnLB6a0gTAriAH
2015! jfc, what a shit show.
Well, the kid would have to be able to release the seatbelt either... But I would not be surprised that no one would teach the kid to do it anyways...
The manual release is only accessible from the inside as well, so even if the driver gets out, you get to watch your kid burn in a car seat because you can't open the door from the outside