FuelArc Has Rated The Tesla Cybertrucks As Over 15x More Likely To Kill Their Passengers Than The Infamous Ford Pinto

In the early 1970s, Ford and GM had the most advanced competitive analysis groups in the automotive industry, or so I was taught when I attended the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals as a brand-new Competitive analyst in the 80s. They took a 1966 Japanese car and analyzed it down to the nuts and bolts and then drove that into the creation of two cars, the Chevy Vega and the Ford Pinto, showcasing one of the biggest problems with competitive analysis: it takes too long to do the analysis and cram the results into new car designs for while the Pinto and the Vega were very competitive with that 1966 Japanese car they analyzed they were woefully uncompetitive with the Japanese cars that came out in the 1970s and many of us thought GM and Ford were likely to go under. 

The Ford Pinto got a lot of bad press due to its gas tank placement well back in the car, which wasn’t that different for many of the cars at the time and most pickup trucks. But as Ralph Nader did to the Corvair a few years earlier, the reputation for the Ford Pinto for blowing up when rear-ended pretty much killed the car. Pinto had .85 fatalities for every 100,000 cars. It even spawned a scene in the comedy “Top Secret.”

However, currently, the Tesla Cybertruck has had 14.52 fatalities on average, which is around 15x this fatality rate, suggesting that if the Pinto were considered unsafe, the Tesla Cybertruck would be a death trap if this analysis from FuelArc is correct. 

Cybertruck Issues

What is also somewhat frightening is that according to FuelArc, the Tesla Cybertruck has yet to pass independent crash testing by the National Highway Safety Administration, and the vehicle has several design defects. These defects include a lack of crumple zones, hazardous self-driving software (it almost seems like Tesla is intentionally scaring people away from autonomous driving technology), batteries prone to catching fire (not uncommon with current EV battery technology), and the vehicle’s tendency to brick itself when it is least convenient like in the middle of a highway.

The truck is so bad that both the EU and the UK have been impounding them when they cross into their control areas, and they have been banned from many European streets as unsafe.  It is like Tesla looked at Ford Pinto’s poor safety record and decided to work to make the Cybertruck so much more dangerous than Pinto in some TikTok challenge that was decidedly ill-advised.

Be aware that Cybertruck is still a relatively new vehicle with a unique and innovative design, so its reliability will likely suffer. There is always a problem with a new, unique design because you won’t be able to rely on past vehicles as much to determine what will or will not be safe. Still, having a death rate of many multiples of the Ford Pinto is problematic, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of the Cybertruck.

Wrapping Up:

There are a lot of unsafe vehicles on the road. The most unsafe as of this writing are the Hyundai Venue, the Chevrolet Corvette (in defense of the Corvette, Corvette drivers tend to drive very aggressively), the Mitsubishi Mirage, the Ford F-Series pickup, Tesla Model Y, Tesla Model S, the Dodge Charger (drivers again), and the Nissan Frontier.  According to iSeeCars, the Hyundai Venue, for instance, has a fatality rate nearly 5x higher than the average car. So, the Cybertruck isn’t alone in terms of being unsafe.

General advice for all cars like this is to know what to do if you are in an accident (like knowing how to open the door if the battery power fails) and drive conservatively in the car. Most related accidents tend to come from people doing stupid stuff like napping while using a Tesla autopilot or driving too aggressively on dark, wet, or icy roads. 

However, given Pinto's grief, it is interesting that the Cybertruck is so much worse, and two other Teslas are on the list of most dangerous cars. EVs aren’t the same as ICE (internal combustion engine) cars in that they develop a ton of torque from zero. Their acceleration isn’t like anything you’ve likely felt before, so it is very easy to get into trouble. The Cybertruck is more significant than most, suggesting you must be even more careful driving it.

You should treat every car with respect, or you’ll likely end up in trouble; the Tesla Cybertruck needs more respect than most of the cars out there, and if you want to survive driving it, you need to learn how to drive it safely and avoid the kind of risks that could have you on the wrong side of a related accident. 

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News who covers automotive technology and battery development. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.