Fireplace Fatalities Report Provides To Cybertruck…Mystique?

Join every day information updates from CleanTechnica on e mail. Or comply with us on Google Information!

---

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

For individuals who like to dwell dangerously, there’s nothing like rushing down the street in a Ford Pinto, figuring out that it may 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 fastidiously engineered automobile, and the Cybertruck might entice greater than its share of threat takers. Nonetheless, the Pinto comparability is an consideration getter, and the information group FuelArc obtained plenty of consideration final week when it ran the hearth fatality numbers below the headline, “It’s Official: the Cybertruck is Extra Explosive than the Ford Pinto.”

FuelArc reporter Kay Leadfoot supplies the figures to again up that declare, together with an outline of the methodology (see them right 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 fuel tank,” within the phrases of FuelArc reporter Kay Leadfoot.

As 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 occasions extra more likely to have a fireplace fatality than a Ford Pinto.”

“The Ford Pinto was a meme from the time earlier than memes – an emblem of company greed at the price of client security,” 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 ultimately as CEO. And, the remainder 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 by a sequence of reputational episodes, some involving the Tesla manufacturing facility 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 indicate indicators of slippage final 12 months. “Tesla’s gross sales dropped in 2024 12 months over 12 months — far off of the corporate’s plan to develop 50% a 12 months, on common, all through the 2020s,” CleanTechnica editor Zachary Shahan reported on February 2.

“Why did it appear to me that gross sales weren’t going to be nice and that Tesla gross sales may even decline? Easy: as a result of Tesla saved dropping costs and providing increasingly incentives, together with repeatedly providing important incentives Elon Musk mentioned they’d solely provide as soon as,” Shahan added. The sudden disappearance of the previously years-long reservations record 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 good gross sales document in comparison with different electrical pickup vans.

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

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

One other attraction to the futuristic aesethetic is coming from three-wheeled electrical autos. Three-wheelers, additionally known as autocycles, have been as soon as pretty fashionable within the twentieth century and they look like headed for a comeback.

Security First

Circling again round to the security difficulty, hearth isn’t the one space of concern. In 2023, Reuters reporters Akash Sriram and Hyunjoo Jin described the reactions of six security consultants who reviewed crash take a look at movies of the Cybertruck.

With the caveat that precise knowledge could be wanted earlier than they may make a agency evaluation, the consultants raised considerations concerning the elevated threat of hazard to pedestrians and to the occupants of different vehicles.

“Julia Griswold, director of the College of California, Berkeley’s Secure Transportation Analysis and Training Heart, mentioned she was ‘alarmed’ by the crash take a look at movies Tesla posted,” Sriram and Jin reported. “She mentioned the heavy weight of the vans and their excessive acceleration ‘increase pink flags for non-occupants.’”

It’s  troublesome to make a generalization primarily based on the Cybertruck’s precise on-the-road document presently, 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 significantly good.

In November of 2024 the net automotive score agency iSeeCars took a take a look at the information 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 Mannequin Y on its record of high 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 Mannequin Y, Mitsubishi Mirage G4, Buick Encore, Kia Forte, and Buick Envision spherical out the highest 10 deadliest autos, with deadly accident charges between 2.8 and 4.9 occasions the typical,” iSeeCars elaborated.

On a model foundation, iSeeCars reported that “Tesla has the very best deadly accident charge of all automobile manufacturers.”

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

What’s Subsequent For The Cybertruck

“Beginning at $60,990, Cybertruck is not going to be a high-volume automobile like Tesla’s Mannequin Y, however Musk has mentioned Tesla was more likely to attain a manufacturing charge of roughly 250,000 Cybertrucks a 12 months in 2025,” the Reuters reporters Sriram and Jin famous again in 2023.

If that’s the case, Tesla has a protracted option to go this 12 months. The automaker reportedly offered lower than 40,000 models in 2024, with some analysts attributing a part of that to the cannibalization of Mannequin S and X gross sales. CleanTechnica can be amongst these mentioning that EV gross sales within 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 (authentic picture by Carolyn Fortuna).