The Cybertruck isn’t just junk — it’s a death trap.
According to new reporting from The Washington Post, the Tesla pickup truck’s unorthodox design — including features used in other Tesla cars, like electric doors —can prevent emergency responders from rescuing people trapped in the vehicles. The newspaper found at least two cases of people dying inside a Cybertruck because the passengers or first responders were unable to quickly access or exit the vehicles.
In one horrific 2024 crash in Piedmont, California, a bystander was unable to free three of his friends trapped inside a burning Cybertruck because its electronic doors, operated from the outside by hidden push buttons, wouldn’t open. By the time the bystander was able to break its “bulletproof” glass windows, three of the occupants had either burned alive or died of smoke inhalation. Only one escaped. The families of two of the deceased, 20-year-old Jack Nelson and 19-year-old Krysta Tsukahara, have sued Tesla.
Nelson and Tsukahara’s deaths highlight Tesla’s questionable “futuristic” design decisions, which seem to be driven by aesthetics over function and which could be endangering its passengers.
The Cybertruck’s doors, as are other Tesla models, are electrically powered, controlled only by a central touchscreen, a phone app, or hidden capacitive buttons. On the outside, there are no visible handles, and these systems can easily fail during an accident. The doors have emergency releases, but critics argue that they’re unintuitive to the point of being dangerous. The Cybertruck’s passenger doors, for example, must be opened with a pull cord which is hidden under a liner in the bottom storage compartment. Except in specific models made in markets like China, these aren’t labeled, meaning a passenger is unlikely to know where it’s located unless they have intimate knowledge of the truck, let alone figure it out while the vehicle erupts in flames.
“It is more obvious how to get out of a trunk than it is the back seat of a Tesla after a crash,” Phil Koopman, an automotive safety expert and professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University, told WaPo. (Trunks, at least, are required by law to have an illuminated release latch.)
The Cybertruck’s “apocalypse-proof” construction, as Elon Musk describes it, can make it impossible nearly impossible to break through for both the passengers inside and emergency responders outside. The trucks are clad in a thick layer of stainless steel that’s capable of stopping bullets, Musk claims.
In the aftermath of the Piedmont accident, a report cited “poor access for firefighter” as one of the reasons that made the blaze difficult to extinguish. Photos taken in the aftermath of the blaze show pry marks where the firefighters tried to force the cabin open, unsuccessfully.
“When you have a car that you specifically market as being almost invulnerable, bulletproof glass, [a] ball and hammer… when you’re marketing that, obviously something that should come to mind is: How does a rescuer get in in the event of a crash?” attorney Merick Lewin, managing partner of personal injury law firm Good Guys Law, told WaPo in an interview.
In all, WaPo found at least a dozen cases of Tesla drivers and passengers being trapped in their vehicles in life threatening situations since 2019.
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