Fire Fatalities Report Adds To Cybertruck…Mystique?

Join daily news updates from CleanTechnica on e mail. Or follow us on Google News!

Final Up to date on: eleventh February 2025, 01:22 am

For individuals who like to stay dangerously, there’s nothing like rushing down the street in a Ford Pinto, understanding that it might burst into flames on the drop of a hat. Now comes phrase that the Tesla Cybertruck is giving the Pinto a run for the cash, statistically talking. Within the pursuits of thrill-seeking drivers all over the place, let’s check out the numbers on hearth fatalities.

The Cybertruck vs. Pinto Security Smackdown

Dangerous driving habits can trump probably the most rigorously engineered automobile, and the Cybertruck might entice greater than its share of danger takers. Nonetheless, the Pinto comparability is an consideration getter, and the information group FuelArc bought a number of consideration final week when it ran the hearth fatality numbers below the headline, “It’s Official: the Cybertruck is More Explosive than the Ford Pinto.”

FuelArc reporter Kay Leadfoot gives the figures to again up that declare, together with an outline of the methodology (see them here). The quick model is that Ford produced 3,173,491 Pintos from 1970 to 1980. Over these 10 years, 10 deaths occurred in fires attributed to the automobile’s explosive, “famously flawed gas tank,” within the phrases of FuelArc reporter Kay Leadfoot.

Compared, there have been 4 fire-related fatalities involving Cybertrucks because it went into manufacturing (5 if the Las Vegas terror assault is counted). Leadfoot estimates that solely 34,438 Cybertrucks have been on the street as of 2025. Doing the mathematics, Leadfoot concludes: “The CyberTruck is 17 times more likely to have a fire fatality than a Ford Pinto.”

“The Ford Pinto was a meme from the time before memes – a symbol of corporate greed at the cost of consumer safety,” Leadfoot provides for good measure.

Cybertruck Gross sales Slip, Security Or Not

CleanTechnica is among the many many information organizations following the ups and downs of Tesla through the years. We launched onto the Intertubes in 2008, about 5 years after Tesla co-founders Martin Eberhardt and Marc Tarpenning included the agency as Tesla Motors in 2003, later to be joined as Elon Musk as an investor and finally as CEO. And, the remaining is historical past.

Musk unveiled plans for the Cybertruck in 2019 to a lot fanfare. Deliveries started to keen prospects late in 2023. By that point, although, the Tesla model was struggling via a collection of reputational episodes, some involving the Tesla factory in Fremont, California. Throughout the opening months of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, Musk additionally “styled himself as an anti-lockdown hero,” which didn’t assist issues. His buy of Twitter (now “X”) in 2022 was one other inflection level on the way in which to 2024, when he emerged as a number one Trump donor.

Whether or not the reputational dings rubbed off on the Cybertruck or not, Tesla gross sales total started to point out indicators of slippage final yr. “Tesla’s sales dropped in 2024 year over year — far off of the company’s plan to grow 50% a year, on average, throughout the 2020s,” CleanTechnica editor Zachary Shahan reported on February 2.

“Why did it seem to me that sales were not going to be great and that Tesla sales could even decline? Simple: because Tesla kept dropping prices and offering more and more incentives, including repeatedly offering significant incentives Elon Musk said they’d only offer once,” Shahan added. The sudden disappearance of the formerly years-long reservations list for the Cybertruck was additional proof of slippage.

Cybertruck To Face New Competitors

Regardless of indications that curiosity within the Cybertruck is starting to lag, the automobile has attracted a decent gross sales document compared to other electric pickup trucks.

That would change as different automakers search a foothold within the pink scorching U.S. pickup truck market. The California startup TELO Vans, for instance, is making use of a kei-inspired aesthetic to its forthcoming MT1, a scaled down however extremely practical electric pickup truck.

One other supply of competitors might come from electric van makersthat are aiming to draw drivers with futuristic styling, improved performance and a extra versatile inside in comparison with pickup vans.

One other enchantment to the futuristic aesethetic is coming from three-wheeled electric vehicles. Three-wheelers, additionally referred to as autocycles, have been as soon as pretty well-liked within the twentieth century and they seem like headed for a comeback.

Security First

Circling again round to the protection concern, hearth will not be the one space of concern. In 2023, Reuters reporters Akash Sriram and Hyunjoo Jin described the reactions of six security specialists who reviewed crash take a look at movies of the Cybertruck.

With the caveat that precise information could be wanted earlier than they might make a agency evaluation, the specialists raised issues in regards to the increased risk of danger to pedestrians and to the occupants of different vehicles.

“Julia Griswold, director of the University of California, Berkeley’s Safe Transportation Research and Education Center, said she was ‘alarmed’ by the crash test videos Tesla posted,” Sriram and Jin reported. “She said the heavy weight of the trucks and their high acceleration ‘raise red flags for non-occupants.’”

It’s  tough to make a generalization primarily based on the Cybertruck’s precise on-the-road document right now, as a result of it has comparatively few miles below its belt. Nonetheless, if the numbers from different Tesla fashions are any indication, the outlook doesn’t look notably good.

In November of 2024 the net automotive score agency iSeeCars took a take a look at the info on occupant fatalities compiled by FARS, the U.S. Fatality Evaluation Reporting System, between 2017 and 2022, masking mannequin years 2018-2022.

On a person automobile foundation, iSeeCars put the Tesla Model Y on its record of prime 10 deadliest vehicles primarily based on deadly accidents per mile traveled. Main the pack have been the Hyundai Venue, Chevy Corvette, and Mitsubishi Mirage.

“The Porsche 911, Honda CR-V Hybrid, Tesla Model Y, Mitsubishi Mirage G4, Buick Encore, Kia Forte, and Buick Envision round out the top 10 deadliest vehicles, with fatal accident rates between 2.8 and 4.9 times the average,” iSeeCars elaborated.

On a model foundation, iSeeCars reported that “Tesla has the highest fatal accident rate of all car brands.”

Karl Brauer, an Government Analyst on the agency, famous that at this time’s autos are designed to be safer than ever, however drivers are extra distracted at this time, contributed to rising charges of accidents and deaths throughout the trade.

What’s Subsequent For The Cybertruck

“Starting at $60,990, Cybertruck will not be a high-volume vehicle like Tesla’s Model Y, but Musk has said Tesla was likely to reach a production rate of roughly 250,000 Cybertrucks a year in 2025,” the Reuters reporters Sriram and Jin famous again in 2023.

If that’s the case, Tesla has a protracted strategy to go this yr. The automaker reportedly bought lower than 40,000 items in 2024, with some analysts attributing a part of that to the cannibalization of Mannequin S and X gross sales. CleanTechnica can also be amongst these mentioning that EV sales in the US rose in 2024 whereas Tesla noticed an total decline.

Photograph: The Tesla Cybertruck hit the electrical pickup truck market with a bang, however model status points might cloud its future (unique photograph by Carolyn Fortuna).