Tesla CyberTruck incinerates occupant

[alarmguy]

This is complete insanity in my opinion. This publication posts a good case about the number of cyber truck fires compared to the amount of cyber trucks that have actually been sold, but even if that wasn’t true, it’s a fact that people have a problem exiting these vehicles in a panic situation.

When will it stop? The insanity of making something difficult to exit a vehicle in a panic situation? I guess we will never know what happened inside that vehicle, but we do know Tesla’s have a case history . The other cause, of course can be the insane heat generated by burning batteries.

I mean, how would you feel if this was a family member? Insane, he was incinerated inside the vehicle. After enormously long time and once fully extinguished they found the occupants rib cage and a spine on the front seat. The occupant was a 47-year-old nurse practitioner and had the truck for three months.

I don’t know, this is like really sad
““He burned to death at 5,000°F – a fire so hot his bones experienced thermal fracture,” reads the complaint from Sheehan’s family.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/18/tesla-cybertruck-crashes-battery-fires

 

[Hirev]

The insanity of making something difficult to exit a vehicle in a panic situation?

I'm not a fan of the cyber trucks. But all you have to do is pull up the manual door release located in front of the window switches. It is easier than the emergency manual door release on my c6 corvette that thing is on the floor.

 

[alarmguy]

I'm not a fan of the cyber trucks. But all you have to do is pull up the manual door release located in front of the window switches. It is easier than the emergency manual door release on my c6 corvette that thing is on the floor.

Also an indication of the temperatures these batteries burn at
I kind of like the trucks. But I’m not normal

 

[repairman54]

Just more validation on fully reading the owners manual and not just the entertainment and phone section.
BTW I had an elderly friend who went off the road in a new F150, driving it home from the dealer day one, and it caught fire from the accident. They had to do a forensic autopsy to identify the remains. All paperwork including the temp. plate burnt up. Happened in rural NM.

 

[demarpaint]

Also an indication of the temperatures these batteries burn at

A tragedy. Insanely hot, and a nightmare to extinguish.

 

[The_Jeff]

Just more validation on fully reading the owners manual and not just the entertainment and phone section.

Well, yeah, that, but the user interface should be something you can easily translate from one vehicle to the next. What if you're riding with a friend, or taking an uber, etc?

This is why hotels have clear "exit" signs at the end of hallways, and usually a map inside the room door.

 

[Torrid]

I'm not a fan of the cyber trucks. But all you have to do is pull up the manual door release located in front of the window switches. It is easier than the emergency manual door release on my c6 corvette that thing is on the floor.

The C6 is the example I always bring up. I remember seeing that setup when the car initially came out and thought emergency release location was crazy.

 

[CleanSump]

DOT/NHTSA could make manual, mechanical releases located in an obvious and easily used location mandatory. The complaints would only amount to it isn't cool looking and messes up my ultra modern design.

 

[ripcord]

Also an indication of the temperatures these batteries burn at
I kind of like the trucks. But I’m not normal

If you were normal, you wouldn't be here with the rest of us weirdos.

 

[goblin]

Two things have to be kept separate I think...

- That it is absolute criminal insanity to make vehicles where borderline specialized training and advanced escape room experience is needed to clear out of a crashed vehicle is an undeniable fact.

- To assume that every poor victim who died in a crashed car that cought fire (Tesla or otherwise) died while frantically trying to open the doors from the inside is an elaborate assumption. Many of these could have been knocked off, immobilized, or dead already.

I have a family friend who once found a car that had passed him a minute or two prior crashed at the entrance of a mountain highway tunnel (not in the US) and engulfed in flames. He couldn't do anything for the guy inside with his puny fire extinguisher (he had one), and was in a frantic state watching the car and the driver inside burn to a crisp.

Firefighters dealt with the flames on arrival and he shared his very dark thoughts with one of them. The guy went "Pal, the only difference you would have made by pulling him out on time was to his family, allowing them an open casket burial rather than what they'll have to go with now. His neck was snapped on impact, and he died instantly".

 

[robbobster]

Carmakers love over-complicating simple things, for the sake of change and nothing more, to justify 5-year product cycles. IMHO

 

[goblin]

Carmakers love over-complicating simple things, for the sake of change and nothing more, to justify 5-year product cycles. IMHO

Everything that you see as overcomplication is either cost cutting (physical buttons more expensive than touchscreens for example) or something that can be spun as progress and overcharged for (screens come to play again, electric door handles too). There's rarely change for the sake of change if there's no money in it.

 

[CleanSump]

Two things have to be kept separate I think...

- That it is absolute criminal insanity to make vehicles where borderline specialized training and advanced escape room experience is needed to clear out of a crashed vehicle is an undeniable fact.

- To assume that every poor victim who died in a crashed car that cought fire (Tesla or otherwise) died while frantically trying to open the doors from the inside is an elaborate assumption. Many of these could have been knocked off, immobilized, or dead already.

Good point.
Often the Rescue people have to break glass or use jaws of life or big Sawzalls to get people out. The people inside just can't. Twist the body and the doors ain't coming open by a latch.

 

[ripcord]

Everything that you see as overcomplication is either cost cutting (physical buttons more expensive than touchscreens for example) or something that can be spun as progress and overcharged for (screens come to play again, electric door handles too). There's rarely change for the sake of change if there's no money in it.

Yep. Henry Ford should have stuck with making Model A's. <Just Kidding!>

 

[goblin]

Yep. Henry Ford should have stuck with making Model A's. <Just Kidding!>

Ergonomics are a science written in blood, like most science pertaining to safety. People died to get things done right.

The human body has not changed much in the last few thousand years. Car cabins have evolved to adapt to the human body. Once ergonomic perfection is reached, it has nowhere to go. It can be refined maybe, but not changed. Car ergonomics peaked in the early 2000s.

Why then - because this is when mechanical started being replaced with electrical as far as the backend goes, but the command interface was still analog.

So if in 1990 your HVAC controls shape and function were still partly mandated by the fact that you had mechanical cables activating your heater valve for the different modes, and another mechanical cable was controlling the hot/cold - they were standardized into what worked well ergonomically. In the early 2000s, these could be replaced on the backend with purely electrically actuated gizmos, but the commands were still analog.

So they could be refined even further. That knob that had to be a given shape because it actuated things mechanically - still remained a knob, but could be made to feel even better.

Why analog works - because it's reachable without having to look for it (buttons, toggles, switches), and readable with your peripheral vision (roung gauges where you know where you are just by glancing in a microsecond and acknowledging the position of the needle).

This analog command layer has an incompressible cost. It can't get cheaper no matter how you try to optimize it. A button is a button. A knurled knob needs the extra manufacturing operation to have knurls. And so on.

Replacing this with a touchscreen, whose cost can only go down, while charging extra selling it as progress, is a sweet deal. So the brands who wrote the book on ergonimics are nowadays, shamefully, the first to throw everything to touchscreens (not looking at Tesla here, the Germans have opened the floodgates too).

Question for the gallery: What is the issue with electronic rearview mirrors (when a screen completely replaces a standard inside rearview mirror, not just complement it for when the trunk is loaded)?

 

[robbobster]

Question for the gallery: What is the issue with electronic rearview mirrors (when a screen completely replaces a standard inside rearview mirror, not just complement it for when the trunk is loaded)?

Speaking only for myself…mirrors are pretty darned reliable. Replacing them with cameras and computer screens is just more crap to break. I keep my cars a long time so I prefer simplicity.

 

[K2K2]

Speaking only for myself…mirrors are pretty darned reliable. Replacing them with cameras and computer screens is just more crap to break. I keep my cars a long time so I prefer simplicity.

I am 110% in agreement with you on this; I will choose reliable over high-tech just about any time.

 

[goblin]

There's another, real issue, on top of it - even for the best, super duper genius technologically perfect rearview mirror replaced by a screen mirror .

Hint: most modern things, these mirrors included, were probably engineered by young people.

 

[K2K2]

There's another, real issue, on top of it - even for the best, super duper genius technologically perfect rearview mirror replaced by a screen mirror .

Hint: most modern things, these mirrors included, were probably engineered by young people.

"It's neat-o, watch what I can do"

You can't record what is in an automotive mirror....

 

[goblin]

Back at a keyboard...

So, about electronic rearview mirrors - we agree, we are talking about a rearview mirror, inside the car, that is a screen, rather than a real mirror - Polestar style. Not the combined rearview mirrors that are a regular mirror which can turn into a screen when the luggage hides the view, Subaru style (those I'll allow ).

- A normal mirror has depth. If you take a camera and focus it at infinity, then point it to your rearview mirror that shows a mountain or something very distant - the camera doesn't refocus. The object in the mirror is focused at infinity.

- If you take a camera and focus it at infinity, then point to a rearview mirror that is a screen (which shows that same mountain that is far behind you) - the camera focuses on the screen. Which is what - 20 inches away.

The same for human eyes:

- When you look forward, then glance at a normal mirror - your eyes don't need to refocus.
- When you look forward, then glance at an electronic mirror - your eyes have to refocus on the "mirror" itself.

It doesn't matter much for youngsters and eagle eyed jedis, their eyesiht readjusts instantly, but for anyone above a certain age that increasingly needs reading glasses - figuring out what's in your mirror will become a 2-3 seconds adventure.

And if you wear bifocals - with their nearsight usually at the bottom of the eyeglasses - you'll have to point your nose all the way up to the headliner to catch that mirror/screen clearly at the bottom of your glasses. And you'll completely lose the road in front of you from your sight.

I haven't seen this discussed anywhere yet, and it doesn't seem to be considered an issue. To me, it's a compouding safety issue like all the little bits that make car ergonomics less safe.