We now have a full year of data for the Cybertruck, and a strange preponderance of headlines about Cybertrucks exploding into flames, including several fatalities. That’s more than enough data to compare to the Ford Pinto, a car so notoriously combustible that it has become a watchword for corporate greed. Let’s start with the data…

  • antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    I’m all for shitting on Elon, but it seems premature to declare the issue “officially” settled. Who’s the official anyway? This smells to me like enshittification of the internet, of journalism, and maybe even rational thought.

    5 deaths from presumably 3 vehicles ablaze. The one which killed 3 of the people (60% for those who love statistics), the main battery pack did not catch fire. So, was it smoking, or something else?

    Sure you can use statistics to say it has a higher fire rate than the Pinto. But without knowing the root cause of each fire, it cannot be deduced whether we should expect the rate to continue. I would suspect it should end up similar to other Teslas, unless a specific design flaw is identified. Another thing to keep in mind is that Tesla changes production on the fly, so if there is a design flaw, it may not persist into the next units.

    Finally, the Cybertruck is stupid and I hope it fails. But that’s just like, my opinion.

    • KayLeadfoot@fedia.ioOP
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      21 hours ago

      Sure, sure. The “official” just means that the first year of results are measured. Felt too early to look at before we had a full year of data.

      The statistic for the Cybertruck wasn’t intended to determine cause, just effect. Maybe you’re right and they’ll wind up about as safe as other Teslas, which are the most lethal brand of car to drive based on NHTSA data. You can see why the DOGE effort is closely scrutinizing the NHTSA.

      Totally hear you and agree to the broad sentiment if not the specifics. I really hope you’re right, I hope they fix it and it becomes safer. The door emergency release designs in particular feel antagonistic to the lives of rear seat passengers.

      Also, just my opinion. I mostly tell jokes, I just stumbled into a joke where I was like “wait that can’t be true, can it,” and then a couple hours of research later, it looked like it was confoundingly true.