Fire Fatalities Report Adds To Cybertruck…Mystique?

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Last Updated on: 11th February 2025, 01:22 am

For those who love to live dangerously, there’s nothing like speeding down the road in a Ford Pinto, knowing that it could burst into flames at the drop of a hat. Now comes word that the Tesla Cybertruck is giving the Pinto a run for the money, statistically speaking. In the interests of thrill-seeking drivers everywhere, let’s take a look at the numbers on fire fatalities.

The Cybertruck vs. Pinto Safety Smackdown

Risky driving habits can trump the most carefully engineered vehicle, and the Cybertruck may attract more than its share of risk takers. Still, the Pinto comparison is an attention getter, and the news organization FuelArc got a lot of attention last week when it ran the fire fatality numbers under the headline, “It’s Official: the Cybertruck is More Explosive than the Ford Pinto.”

FuelArc reporter Kay Leadfoot provides the figures to back up that claim, along with a description of the methodology (see them here). The short version is that Ford produced 3,173,491 Pintos from 1970 to 1980. Over those 10 years, 10 deaths occurred in fires attributed to the car’s explosive, “famously flawed gas tank,” in the words of FuelArc reporter Kay Leadfoot.

In comparison, there have been four fire-related fatalities involving Cybertrucks since it went into production (five if the Las Vegas terror attack is counted). Leadfoot estimates that only 34,438 Cybertrucks were on the road as of 2025. Doing the math, Leadfoot concludes: “The CyberTruck is 17 times more likely to have a fire fatality than a Ford Pinto.”

“The Ford Pinto was a meme from the time before memes – a symbol of corporate greed at the cost of consumer safety,” Leadfoot adds for good measure.

Cybertruck Sales Slip, Safety Or Not

CleanTechnica is among the many news organizations following the ups and downs of Tesla over the years. We launched onto the Intertubes in 2008, about five years after Tesla co-founders Martin Eberhardt and Marc Tarpenning incorporated the firm as Tesla Motors in 2003, later to be joined as Elon Musk as an investor and eventually as CEO. And, the rest is history.

Musk unveiled plans for the Cybertruck in 2019 to much fanfare. Deliveries began to eager customers late in 2023. By that time, though, the Tesla brand was suffering through a series of reputational episodes, some involving the Tesla factory in Fremont, California. During the opening months of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, Musk also “styled himself as an anti-lockdown hero,” which didn’t help matters. His purchase of Twitter (now “X”) in 2022 was another inflection point on the way to 2024, when he emerged as a leading Trump donor.

Whether the reputational dings rubbed off on the Cybertruck or not, Tesla sales overall began to show signs of slippage last year. “Tesla’s sales dropped in 2024 year over year — far off of the company’s plan to grow 50% a year, on average, throughout the 2020s,” CleanTechnica editor Zachary Shahan reported on February 2.

“Why did it seem to me that sales were not going to be great and that Tesla sales could even decline? Simple: because Tesla kept dropping prices and offering more and more incentives, including repeatedly offering significant incentives Elon Musk said they’d only offer once,” Shahan added. The sudden disappearance of the formerly years-long reservations list for the Cybertruck was further evidence of slippage.

Cybertruck To Face New Competition

Despite indications that interest in the Cybertruck is beginning to lag, the vehicle has attracted a respectable sales record compared to other electric pickup trucks.

That could change as other automakers seek a foothold in the red hot U.S. pickup truck market. The California startup TELO Trucks, for example, is applying a kei-inspired aesthetic to its forthcoming MT1, a scaled down but highly functional electric pickup truck.

Another source of competition could come from electric van makers, which are aiming to attract drivers with futuristic styling, improved functionality and a more flexible interior compared to pickup trucks.

Another appeal to the futuristic aesethetic is coming from three-wheeled electric vehicles. Three-wheelers, also called autocycles, were once fairly popular in the 20th century and they appear to be headed for a comeback.

Safety First

Circling back around to the safety issue, fire is not the only area of concern. In 2023, Reuters reporters Akash Sriram and Hyunjoo Jin described the reactions of six safety experts who reviewed crash test videos of the Cybertruck.

With the caveat that actual data would be needed before they could make a firm assessment, the experts raised concerns about the increased risk of danger to pedestrians and to the occupants of other cars.

“Julia Griswold, director of the University of California, Berkeley’s Safe Transportation Research and Education Center, said she was ‘alarmed’ by the crash test videos Tesla posted,” Sriram and Jin reported. “She said the heavy weight of the trucks and their high acceleration ‘raise red flags for non-occupants.’”

It is  difficult to make a generalization based on the Cybertruck’s actual on-the-road record at this time, because it has relatively few miles under its belt. Still, if the numbers from other Tesla models are any indication, the outlook does not look particularly good.

In November of 2024 the online automotive rating firm iSeeCars took a look at the data on occupant fatalities compiled by FARS, the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System, between 2017 and 2022, covering model years 2018-2022.

On an individual vehicle basis, iSeeCars put the Tesla Model Y on its list of top 10 deadliest cars based on fatal accidents per mile traveled. Leading the pack were the Hyundai Venue, Chevy Corvette, and Mitsubishi Mirage.

“The Porsche 911, Honda CR-V Hybrid, Tesla Model Y, Mitsubishi Mirage G4, Buick Encore, Kia Forte, and Buick Envision round out the top 10 deadliest vehicles, with fatal accident rates between 2.8 and 4.9 times the average,” iSeeCars elaborated.

On a brand basis, iSeeCars reported that “Tesla has the highest fatal accident rate of all car brands.”

Karl Brauer, an Executive Analyst at the firm, noted that today’s vehicles are designed to be safer than ever, but drivers are more distracted today, contributed to rising rates of accidents and deaths across the industry.

What’s Next For The Cybertruck

“Starting at $60,990, Cybertruck will not be a high-volume vehicle like Tesla’s Model Y, but Musk has said Tesla was likely to reach a production rate of roughly 250,000 Cybertrucks a year in 2025,” the Reuters reporters Sriram and Jin noted back in 2023.

If that’s the case, Tesla has a long way to go this year. The automaker reportedly sold less than 40,000 units in 2024, with some analysts attributing part of that to the cannibalization of Model S and X sales. CleanTechnica is also among those pointing out that EV sales in the US rose in 2024 while Tesla saw an overall decline.

Photo: The Tesla Cybertruck hit the electric pickup truck market with a bang, but brand reputation issues may cloud its future (original photo by Carolyn Fortuna).