The Tesla Cybertruck, a huge electric and armored behemoth, has no exterior door handles. A deadly combination in a crash that makes it a death trap: at least five serious fires have been documented after impacts of this electric pickup, with four fatalities. Three of them were trapped inside.
Since its arrival on the market a little over two years ago, Tesla has faced several lawsuits accusing it of prioritizing design over safety in this enormous zero-emissions vehicle. The US safety authority is closely monitoring these cases, although so far it has not opened an official investigation. Meanwhile, safety experts warn that these accidents could recur if the Cybertruck’s design isn’t changed.
Electronic doors, armored glass, and preventable deaths
A lengthy Guardian article documents up to five crashes that led to violent fires involving the Tesla Cybertruck. Several of them ended in fatalities: the crash did not kill the occupants, but the smoke and burns, as they couldn’t escape from inside the electric pickup.
Four deceased burned inside. One of them was Michael Sheehan, a 47-year-old nurse from Baytown, Texas. He was returning home in the early hours of August 2024 when he lost control, veered off the road and overturned, hitting a concrete barrier. He had been drinking. When emergency services arrived, the flames towered over three meters in height. Liters and liters of water, and hours later, they managed to extinguish the flames.
Inside they found Sheehan’s remains completely charred. “The body inside was severely burned and completely unrecognizable,” the officer wrote in the report. “Died scorched at around 2,760°C; a fire so intense that his bones suffered thermal fractures,” reads the lawsuit filed by Sheehan’s family.
Not the only one. Also in 2024, three college students aged 20 and 19 died in similar circumstances in Piedmont, San Francisco, California. The driver had also been drinking, was speeding and veered off the road, crashing into a tree. Only one of the four occupants could escape: three of the youths died inside the burning Cybertruck. “This case stems from catastrophic design flaws in the Tesla Cybertruck that turned a potentially non-fatal collision into a fatal fire,” argued the family of one of the deceased, according to Bloomberg.
Others were lucky to tell the tale. Alijah Arenas, an NBA prospect, was coming back from a practice when his Tesla Cybertruck began to fail. In his case it wasn’t due to drinking; he was sober, and the car accelerated and he couldn’t brake. After crashing, he lost consciousness. When he woke up, there was a lot of smoke inside, and he tried to kick his way out through the glass, to no avail. Two people pulled him out through a window before the fire consumed the vehicle.
A deadly trap in case of fire. Although the cases differ—since in two of them the crashes were due to drivers’ drinking—there is a common denominator: the occupants’ inability to exit the electric pickup on their own, even when they were able to do so.
In all of them, police investigations and court records point to the design of the electric pickup. Primarily, because of its electronic opening system: buttons from the inside and no exterior handle of any kind. The Cybertruck has a mechanical backup, but it’s not exactly intuitive. Added to this are the armored glass, which makes it more difficult to break from inside and outside.
Sumado a que se trata de un coche eléctrico, que son más complicados de apagar: la química de las baterías motrices sufren lo que se conoce como ’embalamiento térmico’. Provoca una reacción en cadena sobre cada celda adyacente alcanzando temperaturas superiores a los 480ºC, lo que se traduce en que se tarda horas en apagarla, exigiendo grandes cantidades de agua. Una vez sofocados, pueden vuelven a arder.
Design and safety. Security experts have criticized the Tesla Cybertruck’s design in particular and Teslas in general, since all opening mechanisms are electronic. “They are technological features that may look good to sell cars, but it’s as if they hadn’t studied the human factors behind them… to see how they would perform in critical safety incidents,” says Michael Brooks, CEO of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety.
Tesla has updated the Cybertruck in December, ensuring that in the event of an impact the doors unlock. However, if occupants are injured and cannot exit on their own, it still cannot be opened from the outside because it lacks physical handles.
A vueltas con las puertas de los Tesla: demandas e investigaciones
The Tesla Cybertruck has been singled out as the least reliable car on the market, with up to 10 mass recalls since its market launch in November 2023. It has also drawn numerous complaints from owners, with doors that open while driving or even losing body panels. It also carries a relatively high death rate, considering that only about 60,000 units are estimated to have been sold since its debut.
Families of the victims in these accidents have sued Tesla: “The evidence is very clear: Tesla built a car that was dangerous for occupants if an incident like this occurred”, said the attorney Nelson, who represents one of the students who died in the California Cybertruck crash. In total there are four lawsuits, plus the fifth from the relatives of the Texas nurse.
Open investigation by the US NHTSA. After these crashes, the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) is currently gathering information from Tesla and the complaints and affidavits regarding the Cybertruck, but has not opened a formal investigation yet. However, the US safety regulator is indeed investigating the electric door handles of the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y, as there have been multiple cases of occupants being trapped in burning cars.
“How can Tesla keep selling cars that know they trap people inside after an accident? They could have fixed it, but they refused,” criticized Jacquelyn Tremblett, mother of a young man who died trapped in a Model Y after a crash last October. “My son died after indescribable suffering”.
According to an analysis by Bloomberg, there have been at least 15 deaths in Tesla cars in the last decade caused by trapped occupants, four of them in the Cybertruck. A Washington Post investigation collected at least a dozen cases since 2019, again involving passengers unable to exit Elon Musk’s brand’s electric cars.
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