Tesla, the electric car company owned by Elon Musk, has recalled thousands of its new Cybertrucks over safety concerns.
It is because their accelerator pedals currently risk getting trapped by the interior trim, increasing the possibility of crashes.
The BBC recently spoke to a whistleblower at the company who had raised concerns over the safety of pedals of previous Tesla models.
Tesla has been contacted for comment.
The recall affects 3,878 Cybertrucks, which cost roughly $61,000 (£48,320), made between November 2023 and April 2024.
“A trapped accelerator pedal can cause the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally, increasing the risk of a crash,” the US Department of Transportation wrote in a notification of the recall.
3,878 fuglytruks is the apparently the entire fleet. That is the really big story here. The fuglytruk is a flop. Nobody wants an 80k rust bucket.
No reasonable personwants one, but apparently there are thousands of morons with too much money that want an ugly novelty truck.
I think MKBHD’s (follow up?) review was probably the best take on it. He specifically did not review it as “a truck” and pretty much described it like an SUV where the trunk region is on the exterior the entire time.
Which I think is a vehicle a lot of people would want. Me and my buddies are sickos who go on multi day camping/climbing trips and would not want to leave all our crap in the open (stuff is either in a tent or locked in the car at night). But for the average person? Throw little timmy’s football pads in the back or put a tarp over your fifty suitcases on the way to a hotel. And make sure you have an empty toolchest so people think you work for a living. Groceries are an issue but basically every truck I have ever had the displeasure of parking near just opens their passenger door all the way (almost always dinging the car next to them) and takes twelve minutes to load three bags.
But as an actual truck? it is dogshit. But also… Simone Giertz kind of created Truckla, the dream vehicle of every single millennial who knows what a Lowe’s is: the El Camino. Form factor of a sedan/crossover but with a truckbed so we don’t have to hold a hand out to keep the pipe from shooting forward and cracking the windshield when we stop. And it would have let them reuse almost the entire existing assembly line and designs.
Groceries are an issue but basically every truck I have ever had the displeasure of parking near just opens their passenger door all the way (almost always dinging the car next to them) and takes twelve minutes to load three bags.
This just made me think of a great feature for all these cars with sensors nowadays.
Side door ding avoidance - as the door is opened if it detects its about to hit another vehicle, it will halt the door opening.
Of course now you need all the fancy tech in the door to halt the door but think of all dings saved!
One day maybe. One day.
The Santa Cruz is basically that. They took the Tucson and turned the trunk into a bed. I love mine, but it would be neat if it were electric.
That’s more than Ford F150 lighting sold in the same starting period back in 2022,and its more than GM sold of the Silverado EV that started months earlier.
Ramps aren’t linear and start slow.
It’s ok they will send out a firmware update to make the brake the accelerator and the accelerator the brake.
I question whether or not Tesla will be around in 3 years. The Cybertruck has been one giant cash sink that has delivered a giant rusty lemon. They cancelled their latest consumer grade car. Their next product is robo-taxis and that’s with a history of driver death from their self-driving tech. And the major car brands have caught up or are at Tesla’s heels.
Tesla still has advantages like an extensive charger network and the appearance of FSD on the horizon to general consumers. People that follow EV closely know there are better options, but they’re a minority.
Not to mention the fact that places like Lemmy give the company and its CEO never-ending free press and coverage.
appearance of FSD on the horizon
It’s been on the horizon for the last 7 years or so.
Thus why I specifically said appearance and also mentioned it was for the uninformed.
I don’t believe FSD is anywhere close to commercially viable for Tesla.
Reality doesn’t matter when you’re selling an idea or image. Its really easy to get lost in our nerd bubble and think everyone else reads about this stuff every day.
Yeah, I think fully self-driving cars are pretty much impossible unless all vehicles on the road are fsd, and reporting information to a single central network.
There’s just too many interconnected variables that can cause cascading newton like chains of cause and effect. For example something as simple as a little bit of rain vs a moderate amount of rain has drastically different effects on the coefficient of friction of the tires and road.
like an extensive charger network
To be fair, that “advantage” shouldn’t even exist.
We shouldn’t have different chargers for cars just like we don’t have different gas stations.
People that follow EV closely know there are better options, but they’re a minority.
I don’t think they’re a minority of people that have considered buying an EV and don’t impulse spend tens of thousands of dollars on a vehicle though.
It doesn’t matter to them if the person who wasn’t going to buy an EV doesn’t buy a Tesla. It matters if the person who was going to buy an EV doesn’t buy a Tesla.
Its not an impulse spend, its a lengthy history of hearing that Teslas are THE option for EV.
Normies who have seen or heard of Teslas for well over a decade now aren’t going to be easily swayed by an upstart company or the latest Nissan Leaf.
Elon’s image after Twitter in my opinion has done way more to dissuade potential buyers than anything Tesla itself or other car manufacturers have done.
The recall affects 3,878 Cybertrucks, which cost roughly $61,000 (£48,320), made between November 2023 and April 2024.
This is a bit off topic, but the $61K RWD trim is “available in 2025”, so the recalled vehicles are either the $80K AWD trim or $100K Cyberbeast trim.
The entire fleet, 80 to 100 thousand dollar vehicles, being recalled because they cheapef out on the fucking accelerator.
If it was GM or Chrysler, I would also assume the stupid decision to glue a flat piece of metal to another flat piece of metal that people are going to stomp on was because glue is cheap.
This, unfortunately, is a Musk run company, so the real reason was likely hubris. Someone’s over engineered solution getting axed for cost is the least likely reason. It’s more likely that the man child in charge (or a hand picked manchildlett crony) thought welding / mechanical fasteners were beneath them and that the glue was actually a sufficient and elegant solution to maintain clean design or some other form over function reason.
I have two comments which I shall illustrate with the following images:
Thanks to the innovative dome design The Homer has better visibility than most cars on the market
The Canyonero at least looked like a plausible vehicle.
That episode was from 1998. If you showed someone a picture of a Cybertruck in 1998 and said that was an actual truck in 2024, they’d ask you when the nuclear war happened.
Ya the Cybertruck does looks straight out of a dystopian future. Maybe it’ll be popular when it’s safe to come out of the vaults in 200 years.
