The Tesla Cybertruck got a five-star rating at the crash tests carried out by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. However, the top score raised some eyebrows. Now, Tesla has released a video to show how it got there and prove that the five stars were well deserved.
The polarizing design of the Tesla Cybertruck raised safety concerns since day one, when Elon Musk took the model to the stage in Los Angeles in November 2019. Full of sharp angles and edges, the Cybertruck was labeled as dangerous for pedestrians. Furthermore, the reduced crumple zone, normally designed to absorb the forces deployed in a collision, was barely there.
It took a while for the NHTSA safety experts to test the Cybertruck. Cars are usually tested soon after they hit the market, but the Cybertruck has been on the market for a year and three months, and all we had before NTHSA’s testing were Tesla’s in-house crash, rollover, and shooting tests.
After the model aced nearly every crash test category, Tesla released a behind-the-scenes video, filmed in its so-called Crash Lab, to show how the automaker put the Cybertruck to the test to make sure it was safe once it got into the customers’ hands.
The footage shows that Tesla conducted the first crash test involving the Cybertruck sometime in 2023. It put the EV face-to-face with a rigid barrier at 35 mph (56 kph). The goal was to see how the front end absorbs the energy and protects the occupants.
Wes Morrill, Lead Cybertruck Engineer, points out that their vehicle was slammed with a misconception that labels the model unsafe for other road users. He explains that couldn’t be further from the truth, as the Cybertruck was designed with a low crash structure, which is in line with the center of gravity and compatible with other vehicles. These design choices were specifically made to make it safe.
Tesla experts analyzed every inch of every vehicle after every crash test to better understand how the truck reacted to the impact. All the tests showed the team when the best time to deploy the airbags was. However, the knee airbags for both the driver and passenger did not deploy in the head-on collision. Tesla informed the agency that the knee airbags were not designed to deploy for “this specific test configuration.“
In the Crash Lab, the Cybertruck was propelled into barriers, rolled over from a ramp, and propelled into a lateral curb and a ditch. The team kept doing these tests until they failed, fixed the failures, and did them again. “The Cybertruck has the lowest probability of injury and the lowest probability of rollover in any pickup truck on the market,” Morrill says.
The Cybertruck did not receive a full five-star rating, though. It was awarded four stars for how the passenger dummy was affected by the forces of the impact in the head-on collision test and four stars for how it behaved in the rollover test. It did not tip over, but it showed a 12.4% risk.
Tesla’s safety experts must be happy with the overall top rating. They claim that the vehicle’s low center of gravity, its exoskeleton, and advanced crash structure were the ones that earned it the five stars awarded by NHTSA. The agency used the top-ranging $99,990 Cybertruck Cyberbeast with 845 horsepower for the tests performed last December.
The Tesla Cybertruck is not the only electric pickup truck that can brag about the top rating. Ford’s F-150 Lightning also got the five stars. However, the GMC Hummer EV, the Chevrolet Silverado EV, and the Rivian R1T have yet to be tested.
Tesla Cybertruck, not street-legal in Europe
The Tesla Cybertruck will probably never officially sell in Europe and China, even though the latter is the automaker’s largest market outside the US. Soon after deliveries started, Elon Musk explained that it would be difficult for the company to modify the model so that it could be homologated on the two continents.
However, there are Cybertrucks driving in Europe after they achieved individual TUV certification, which is valid all across Europe. For instance, YouTuber Yanni Charalambous, aka Yannimize, is driving a modified Cybertruck in the United Kindgom.
To make it legal there, he had to rubberize the sharp edges of the vehicle, which reduced the risk of injury in case of an accident that involved a pedestrian. He also had charging issues because the adaptor his EV came with would not fit the European charging stations, but he eventually found a way out of the predicament.
Another Cybertruck, which belonged to one of his friends, was seized by the police in early January. The photo of the vehicle went viral and everyone thought the move was safety-related. However, the owner of the Cybertruck explained that the police officers “were not happy with the insurance.”
