In Memoriam: The Cybertruck

But even when construction went according to plan, the Cybertruck was destined to be a deathly menace. Safety experts argued that the stainless steel truck was dangerous by design—they didn’t say anything about how it was also really ugly, but I just think that bears repeating: It’s so unbelievably ugly—but Musk, demonstrating his characteristic empathy and concern for his fellow man, assured would-be Cybertruck drivers, “If you have an argument with another car, you will win.” Famously, car crashes have “winners” and “losers” and everyone’s ideal scenario in a car crash is not only to “win” but to also have committed vehicular manslaughter.

Musk evidently did not consider that Cybertrucks would also endanger their own drivers and passengers, but they did: When only 60,000 Cybertrucks had been sold, there had already been five known fires involving four harrowing fatalities. As The Guardian reported, “Cybertrucks have locked passengers inside and burned so hot they’ve disintegrated drivers’ bones.”

Trapping passengers inside its fire-prone vehicles and burning them alive is something of a Tesla specialty, but the particulars of the Cybertruck’s design were even worse than Musk’s average offering. The windows—ironically, given that during a launch event, an attempt to demonstrate the windows’ impenetrability resulted in them shattering onstage—are tougher to break than a standard car window, which is all well and good until you are trying to, say, escape from a burning car when the doors won’t unlock, as was the case in a horrible crash in Piedmont which killed three college students who “asphyxiated in a fire that had exploded at the truck’s front hood after the collision.” A witness who tried to help them was unable to open the car doors, whose electronic buttons weren’t functioning. (There are no door handles on the outside of a Cybertruck.)