Dig into the details of a recent report and you will find more flaws than in a cybertruck and a combined pinto
February 11, 2025 at 6:11 PM
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- A recent report says that the Tesla Cybertruck is more explosive than the Ford Pinto but does not represent several things.
- On the one hand, the small size of the Cybertruck sales sample makes the comparison of fire statistics with the misleading pinto.
- Despite this, the report makes the online rounds and we are here to settle the facts of the bad data reports in the process.
The Tesla Cybertruck is about as guilty of opinion as any vehicle of the last half century. Whether it is to vandalize in parking lots, receive glowing praise from unconditional fans, lose parts of garnish or drive directly into a light post, the truck seems to inspire strong reactions everywhere. In addition to such strong opinions come a gigaton of attention and with this, the need to be skeptical about the headlines involving the truck.
Plus: Tesla Cybertruck allegedly on FSD behaves in a luminous pole
A report by an author under the name of Kay Leadfoot (which, moreover, seems to work with an adorable dog named Raymundo Leadfoot) widely shared publish Fuel titled “It’s official: the cybertruck is more explosive than the Ford Pinto“.
In the article, the author claims that the cybertruck is more explosive (an important word to which we will return) than the Ford Pinto. Leadfoot goes even further to say that it is 17 times more likely to have a death of fire than a pinto. To support the complaint, they cite five deaths reported in the Cybertruck on three reported fires.
The figures behind the complaint
Leadfoot believes that Tesla has so far sold some 34,438 cybertrucks, which means that on average, by 100,000 units sold, 14.52 people die in a death of fire. To be clear, in the real world, these are five deaths linked to fire in total on three distinct events.
Conversely, we only know 27 fire deaths in the Ford Pinto despite some 3,173,491 sales during its nine -year production. This means that only 0.85 people died in the pinto due to a fire per 100,000 units sold. It is, in a word, the extent and depth of the lead lead.
To put it simply, it is far from objective data of apples to apply. First, the Cybertruck delivery figure is so small compared to the Pinto that the comparison of the data is deeply problematic. For example, claim that two companies are building and starting camp fires.
The company has begins and builds only one campfire while Business B built 1,000 camp fires, but can only start two. Technically, the company A had a higher success rate (100% against 0.2%) although Business B built 100% more fire. Comparing them is completely meaningless due to the sample size.
Erroneous data and misleading categorization
Then Leadfoot includes the explosion of Las Vegas as one of the three “fires” in these data which should say a lot about the study as a whole. On their credit, the author writes: “I understand that the last inclusion is controversial, because the driver’s burns would have been post-mortem, so do not hesitate to relaunch these statistics without the Las Vegas incident.” Even without this point of data included, the first point, the overall sizes of radically different data are important.
Read: someone sells a truck of yellow Ford Pinto wagons for $ 16,000 each
In addition, Fuelarc’s report treats all fires like the same, when in reality, the cause of a fire actually counts. In the case of the Pinto, the fires were specifically linked to a documented design defect (a poorly placed fuel tank that broke in rear collisions). In a mortal Cybertruck accident, the driver fell on a tree. In another, the driver turned into a ditch.
What does “explosive” really mean?
Finally, and above all because we are already here, discuss the assertion that cybertruck is more “explosive” than the Pinto. This word is important because Leadfoot says that the report is “honest” and that the explosive word is specific. Explosions are, according to the Dictionary of Oxford, “a violent expansion in which energy is transmitted to the outside as a shock wave”.
This is not documented in any of Cybertruck fires with the exception of that of Las Vegas where literal fireworks have been used and the battery itself has always remained intact. Leadfoot does lead honestly emphasize that fireworks have also exploded in saying, Any vehicle never made? No. In fact, even the ruptures of the petrol tank in the pinto were not real explosions. The fuel would end everywhere after the accident and often took fire. Here is an example exactly of that.
None of this means that the cybertruck is completely safe or that it is not without defects or faults. But that is to say that catchy titles do not always tell the whole story. In a few years, once we have data on hundreds of thousands of cybertrucks, perhaps a serious fatal defect will occur, and the comparison of the two cars will be meaningful. For the moment, this report is more like an aberrant value or an anomaly than good hard data to draw conclusions from the real world.
Lies, fucking lies and statistics
Mark Twain said there were lies, lies and statistics. It seems to be what we have here. If Leadfoot simply intended to attract attention, they surely did it. If they intended to write something really insightful, it seems that they could not hit the side of a cybertruck with a Ford Pinto if they tried. (Please do not try this leadfoot MS / MR as a handset, the two cars are guaranteed to explode exactly 170% of the time they are together … maybe.)
