Cybertrucks Are a Safety Disaster w/ Dara Kerr

Paris Marx is joined by Dara Kerr to discuss how Elon’s decision to prioritize aesthetics over safety has created a safety crisis causing people to burn alive in their Cybertrucks and other Tesla vehicles.

Dara Kerr is a technology reporter at Guardian US.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Dara wrote about fiery, deadly crashes involving Cybertrucks.
• Bloomberg has tracked the wider problem of Tesla door handles trapping occupants in their vehicles.
• Here is a report that supports the suggestion that Musk doesn’t like the colour yellow.
• Here is an analysis comparing the Cybertruck to the Ford Pinto.
• Cybertrucks are not approved for sale in the EU or UK.
• China is the first nation to legislate that handles must be mechanically functional from both sides of a vehicle door.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All these people dying because of the door handles is a serious problem. And uh regulators in other places are looking at it. China is looking at banning these like flush electric door handles. There's been a lot of incidents with um electric cars in China that have copied the Tesla aesthetic that where people have died. So it does seem though that if they should party be doing something.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I don't know, it's been kind of a long time.com to help me keep doing this show, to help me keep interviewing these critical experts so that you have a better understanding of how the tech industry works, what these billionaires are up to, and how they're impacting the world that we all live in, and of course, degrading it over time, which is not what we want to see happen. And, you know, uh every now and then we talk about what an alternative might look like, how we might address these problems, what a better future could actually be. And that's so important. So if you do enjoy those conversations, if you do enjoy the work that I do as part of Tech Won's Save Us, I would ask you to consider going over to patreon.com slash TechWon't Save Us to help us get a hundred new supporters this month to celebrate the show's anniversary, birthday, whatever you want to call it. Um, you know, we're already making good progress toward that goal, but you can help us uh, you know, try to meet it. And uh I would really appreciate that, obviously. So thank you so much. If you enjoy the show, consider going over to Patreon to support us. Of course, you'll get access to ad-free episodes of the show, premium episodes of the show that we do every now and then, and there's gonna be more of those in the next few months as we launch a new series. Um, and of course, if you if you support at uh a certain tier, $10 a month and above, uh, you will get stickers as well. So, you know, there's plenty of reason to sign up, even uh beyond supporting Tech Won't Save Us. So thanks so much. Now, shifting to this week's episode, my guest is Dara Kerr. Dara is a tech reporter at The Guardian in the United States. And, you know, there are many things that I could talk about with Dara, but she had this fantastic story recently about cyber trucks, and in particular about the problem of people being stuck inside of cyber trucks when they catch on fire and how hard it can be to actually get out of them. This is not just a cyber truck problem, it's a broader Tesla problem. But with the Cybertruck, it becomes even worse because the door handles are an issue in many of the Teslas, you know, these cars that don't have proper door handles and they're more of an electronic release. And so if something happens to the car, if it loses the battery, you need to find another way to get out of it. There is, you know, there is a way in the car, but it's not always easy to find or it's not always very obvious. Um, but if you're in a regular Tesla, you know, a regular sedan or a crossover or something like that, it's not too hard to break the window in order to get out, right? To save your life or to or for someone to do that for you. In the Cybertruck, the windows are much thicker. And so that becomes a much more difficult task if you are stuck in the car, it catches on fire, you can't get the doors open, you don't know where that kind of manual release is, um, or there are people outside trying to get you out because you have lost consciousness. Um, but obviously they can't break the windows in the same way, or it's much more difficult for them to do so. So this is an important issue. It's one that we should be paying attention to, it's one that we need to be paying attention to, and we need to ask why a company like Tesla is not being held to account more for, you know, creating a car that operates in this way. We are seeing certain jurisdictions around the world begin to regulate these vehicles and in particular these types of door handles that are causing people to get stuck. But as you'll hear Dara explain in our interview, other manufacturers that are making door handles like this have better manual releases, you know, make it much easier for people to get out of the car if something does happen, if the battery goes out and these door handles don't work properly. But Tesla does not make it so easy. They're starting to make some changes, but it's taken a long time and a lot of backlash and criticism of the company for them to actually act on this. Um, so I think that this is a really important interview. I think it's important for us to understand what is happening with Tesla, the decisions that this company are making for how its cars are designed and how that has influenced other automakers and made people less safe as a result, even though it's been promoted as, you know, making people more safe because there's more technology and you know, it's more high-tech and all this kind of stuff. That is not always the case. In the same way that we see with these infotainment systems and these big screens in the dashboards, and how we're seeing manufacturers roll back on that and put more physical buttons back in their cars. These door handles are another one of these problems that, you know, it looks good, it looks aesthetically nice for this to be happening, but it creates a safety issue at the end of the day that is actually leading to people losing their lives in these cars. And that needs to change, and there needs to be accountability for that. So I think you're really going to enjoy this episode with Dara. Of course, if you do, consider going over to patreon.com slash techwon'save us and joining the well over a thousand people who already support the show. And of course, help us hit our goal this month to celebrate the sixth birthday of Tech Won't Save Us by getting a hundred new supporters. That's patreon.com slash tech won't save us. Pause the show, go over, become a supporter today, and help me continue making this show and providing these critical perspectives on the tech industry. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Dara, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Hello, Paris. So great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Absolutely. I'm really happy to have you on the show finally. We met a while ago in San Francisco. I can't even, I feel like that was like two years ago or something. Yeah. I could be totally wrong, uh, and it might be even longer. Um, but it's like you've been one of those people who for a long time I've wanted to have on the show uh and have just been like looking for the right opportunity. And then you wrote this fantastic piece uh in The Guardian where you work now about cyber trucks and about the safety issues with them. And I was like, okay, this is it. The moment has arrived. I need to have Dara on the show. So very happy to have you here. That's what I'm saying. I'm, you know, just boosting you up uh because I really like your work.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I've long wanted to become start to come on this podcast. Yeah. It's so I'm just it's good. Feeling is mutual.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Um, so you know, let's dig in here, right? Because the cyber truck is something that I think a lot of people will be familiar with. But can you refresh us a bit on like where this vehicle actually comes from, like where the idea for it originates and how it comes to be?

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah. So this has been a passion project for Elon Musk for a long time. I'd say it was first hinted, I'm trying to remember the year, sometime in the late teens, um, that he started talking about it. And then it might have even been earlier. Anyway, I'm the dates are not solid in my mind.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

I I get you on that. I have the same issue sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

And then they he kept hinting at it, hinting at it. And then they finally did this big debut of it, which was a really fun and funny event to watch because um they were demonstrating it's this like, you know, Musk likes to call it apocalypse-proof truck. And so they were demonstrating just how tough it is. And um on the stage at this event where they, you know, first unveiled the cyber truck, they it's, you know, it has this really um strong stainless steel exterior, which apparently Musk kind of fashioned on the same, the same kind of exterior model as his rocket ships. So it's just like really tough, really strong, like impenetrable material. And and then it has these windows that um that are really, really thick, like super laminated windows that he also said were unbreakable. He, you know, he um said that the car itself is bulletproof. Um, and there there was one incident where he went out with Joe Rogan and they shot metal arrows at the truck just to show like they couldn't be penetrated.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

So anyway, I completely forgot about that.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

There's so many fun, yeah, hijinks with this when they were first rolling out this cyber check. But yeah, and then on the stage, they were showing how tough it was, throwing this metal ball at it, and it was like pretty cool because it wasn't, you know, being, you know, hurt or damaged or anything. And then they threw the metal ball at the windows and the window broke, which is really funny and it was like kind of embarrassing. And then so Musk seemed seemed confused on stage, and he had the the guy throw the ball again and it broke again. Um, which is a good thing is if you're talking about safety. And yeah, so all of that, like this like tough exterior, really gets to what I wanted to explore in my story about how that plays into safety for passengers.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Yeah, absolutely. Because I guess if you're thinking about the presentation of it, right? The presentation is look, it makes you so safe as a passenger on the inside because nothing in this kind of exterior environment can get to you, right? Can hurt you, can attack you. You are safe from this scary world that exists outside of your cyber truck. Like I remember at the time when it was announced and when he was rolling it out, you know, I was talking a lot about, you know, kind of the vision that some of these billionaires have about like how scary the world is and how like, you know, this is the kind of vehicle that is going to protect you from all the scary people who want to attack you or whatever, like out in the world, right? But then as you're saying, there's the flip side of that of like if the vehicle is so secure, at least in theory, then what does that mean for getting out of it when something goes wrong, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Yeah, which we've seen um in these just terrible incidents. So I don't know if you want to get into that yet.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

But absolutely. Yeah, well, I I guess I do want to get into that. Maybe just briefly, let's discuss how it has done, right? Because a cyber truck has been out for a few years now. Have we actually like obviously the answer to this is obvious. Most people know it, but like, how is it done? Like it clearly hasn't taken off. What have we seen in the actual reception to this vehicle?

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Right. So, well, first, first off, it's it's a luxury, luxury vehicle. They're very expensive. So this is not for, you know, your typical truck owner. I mean, trip trucks are expensive, but I think the average running rate for cyber trucks depends like what kind of add-ons you put on it, is around $100,000. So yeah, it's a luxury vehicle. Um, it debuted in the fall of let's see, 2024. So it's been out for two and a half years. And it hasn't it has not sold well, but it's also this kind of niche vehicle. So the first year, I think it sold around 40,000 units. And then the second year, so last year, that was halved. So it sold around 20. So it's only sold 60,000 units. And for a comparison, other Tesla models are wildly popular. They are the top electric vehicles like in the world, on the market. And the number of so the Model Y is the most popular of the Teslas. And they sold in the US alone 350,000 units last year. So just comparatively, the truck is not popular or not selling well.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah, it is basically like a footnote to the rest of the business, a business that we know has even been in decline as a whole, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Right. And but that like if you look at Musk talks about the cyber truck all the time, it it seems to like continue to be this passion project for him. And he of all of his vehicles, it's the one he gives the most praise to. And he's he's constantly praising it, saying it's the best vehicle they've ever made. And, you know, so it's it's interesting because it has it has not done well. But, you know, as with like other Teslas, this there has like really diehard fans. You know, there's whole forums dedicated to the cyber truck, and they get really mad. It's funny to go on them because they get really mad when stories like mine come out and they think it's misinformation and made up and fake news. And yeah. So it's yeah, it's really interesting. But it is it's like a very I can't think of another vehicle that has been so like cult status among a small group of people.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yeah. It it makes sense though, right? When you think about who is behind it, and then also like how weird the design is, but also how the design, you know, if you're someone who like is a fan of a certain genre or or a certain era of science fiction, like it really kind of tries to play into some of those aesthetics that obviously Elon Musk likes, but also some of these fans of his will like too. And it's like, I don't know, you can see how it develops that that status that you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Yeah, totally. It definitely has like a Mad Max vibe. And when you look at like when you go to the website to buy a Cybertruck, it's it, you know, the videos are like the cyber truck going through like the Utah desert and you know, kind of like apocalypsey, mad maxi-y vibes, you know, tough.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah, but but but as we've seen from the test, it probably wouldn't fare so well in real life if that's how you were using it uh pretty pretty often. As you were saying, let's get into this this issue of the safety and stuff, right? Um, can you talk to us, I guess, first a little bit more about the design features? You know, you were saying how the outside, uh and and how they were promoting a lot, how the outside is really hardened, right? Uh the idea is that it's going to protect you from what is exterior to your vehicle. But what does that mean for trying to get out of a vehicle if something goes wrong?

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Yeah. And when it's interesting with this like hardened exterior outside, that has meant that the cyber truck has been essentially banned across Europe because of the dangers it presents to pedestrians, because it has these sharp, hard edges and it's big. Yeah, I think the only countries it's sold in is the US, Canada, and Mexico.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

So Yeah, I know that there's a few that like have been imported to parts of Europe uh and like people have been trying to get them around like the regulations or get some kind of like special certification from them. Like I know I saw someone post that there was like a couple driving around in Norway or something like that. Um, but it's very much like again, like very hard to get in there. You're not walking into the Tesla dealership and getting one easily.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Right, exactly. Not going to the Utah Desert on the website. It was been marketed as this like very tough exterior, bulletproof, apocalypse proof vehicle. And it's also the very first Tesla vehicle or car that I know of that has no exterior handles at all, which is really interesting. I didn't realize that when I started working on the story. So I was like, how do they, how do people open the doors? And you use your phone and it's it's like a fob. And then the door just opens, but it's like you like click a little button and the door opens itself. And then I was like, that makes sense because when you see cyber trucks, they have all these like fingerprints, you know, along the edges of the door. I'm like, oh, because you're you're not pulling a handle, like you have to pull the side of the door.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

So so like the door kind of like pops open, and then you have to physically like grip the side of the door and pull the rest, pull it open the rest of the way.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Right. So there's no handle at all, which as you can imagine is not great for emergency situations if someone's trying to rescue someone who's inside the truck. There are electric vehicles, which are known, you know, have these very powerful, very flammable batteries. And there's two batteries in most Teslas, um, including CyberTrucks. So there's the big one that runs the car, and then there's a side one that is for all like the seat, the steering wheel, the doors. And if anything happens to that battery and electricity is shut off, nothing works in the car. And and that can happen, you know, there's like a bunch of reasons why that can happen. The battery can be drained, there can it can come from an accident. So what happens is when that battery shuts off and the doors are closed, even if they're unlocked, there's no latch to actuate. And there's no from the outside, there's like no way to actually get in the car. And then from the inside, there's no way to get out. There's handles on the inside, but they're electric and there's no latch. And so the only way to get out is through this um emergency release button. And in every Tesla, it's different. This is a problem with all Teslas. Um, in the Cybertruck, they the to get out the front seats, there's a little lever that's next to the window switches. And in the cases that I have covered, that switch is not like has not been labeled. But in later versions of the Cybertruck, there's like a tiny little icon that's actually, I wouldn't think it would mean to open the door, but if you know it, it you can see that it's like looks like like a little moving panel. So and that's in the front seat.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

And would that be like easy to see, like easily visible, easy to grab, or is it kind of obscured?

SPEAKER_00 18:01

It it's kind of like the window switch lever. It's very similar. So it's just like this little thing you pull up. From what I understand, like you you don't want to pull it if the car works, because I think it actually breaks the window to open the door. And that's the same with all the Teslas, which maybe is why they obscure it. But from other reporting on this, Bloomberg's done this amazing investigation. It seems like a lot of the reason why like these emergency releases are hidden is for aesthetic reasons and like space. So trying to fit everything in these like sleek electric doors is tough. So it's um it's a like a design issue. And so that's the front seat. So you can imagine, like, if you're in a crash and that gets jumbled, you're not gonna be able to use that lever if you know about it. And so in the backseat, in the cyber truck where the emergency release lever is, is inside the door pocket, you know, where you'd put a drink or something. So to get to it, you have to take there's a little rubber mat at the bottom of the door pocket. You have to peel that back. And then you have to reach your hand inside the interior of the door, and then there's a like a it's not a lever, it's like a cable. And you have to find this cable and pull the cable, and that's how you open it. So you can imagine if you're a passenger and don't have a cyber truck and have never been in a cyber truck, or maybe you're in them all the time, but it's it's not intuitive, and it's really hard. I I can imagine it'd be really hard for people to even know that that exists. And another thing that's interesting, that I didn't put this in the story, but I found it interesting. This is detailed in Tesla's owner's manuals, but the owners, Teslas come with don't come with like a hard copy owner's manual that you have in the glove box. It's all on the computer screen. So say you're yeah, you're in an emergency and you're you need to look something up, you're not the if the electricity is dead, the computer screen is dead too. So it's just like all these kind of compounding issues that seem to be these safety issues seem to be sacrificed for for design.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Yeah, it it even like when you talk about the manual, it's like, okay, assume you get a cyber truck and you do want to know a bit about it, but if you're flipping through like a physical manual, something like that might catch your eye, I would imagine, right? Or or maybe there's a greater likelihood that because you have this physical document, you're actually maybe gonna look a bit more into what the cyber truck actually does, you know, what the kind of non-obvious aspects of it are. But if it's just in your screen, I would say you're far less likely to actually do much digging on how this vehicle works and you know some of the key things that you're gonna need in in case of an emergency, right? And and I feel like that is kind of what we're also seeing reflected in these growing number of stories about people getting stuck in their cyber trucks when something does go wrong, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah. Yeah. And another thing that's interesting is I I didn't talk about these the flush door handles, which Tesla definitely pioneered. The they're flush and they're electric.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

And um in the book And these are are the ones on the other Tesla models, right? Not the soccer truck.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Yeah, but the inside is the same, but the outside, yeah. And we all by now have been confused by trying to open those door handles. I still get confused.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

It wasn't a Tesla, but I was taking a taxi, I don't know, like a month, month and a half ago. And I think it was like a Kia or something like that that pulled up and it had these flush door handles as well. And like the door handle kind of popped out for me to get into the vehicle. And I was like, do I pull this? Am I gonna break it if I pull on it? Like it was so weird.

unknown 21:59

I know.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

I know. I once I took a an Uber like a few months ago and I couldn't figure it was a I couldn't figure it out. And the driver had to like come out and like put push the button and show me. I know. I feel like they're they were done to make us look stupid.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

If you're not a Tesla owner, then you look like an idiot when you get inside of that.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Totally. But those handles, I read the Walter Isaacson um biography of Elon Musk, which I didn't.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

I've also had the misfortune of reading that book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

I don't fully recommend it, but it does have all of this could because he had so much access, all of this information, inside information about like the goings-ons and how decisions were made. And so as a reporter, it's super helpful. I use it all the time, actually. And when he had this whole scene of when those door handles were first designed at Tesla for the original Tesla Roadster. And Elon Musk was like very, very insistent that they are electric and flush. And the engineers had concerns, safety concerns about these door handles. And he just overrode those concerns. And, you know, the handles came out. And it does look really sleek and streamlined. And so you're seeing other manufacturers copying it. And yeah, in the book, when there was pushback to that design element, Elon Musk was, he was said, he's like, you know, when people ask me why I'm so hardcore about all these, you know, design, I'm paraphrasing here, design elements. Um, it's because it has to be beautiful. So these cars, like the number one priority is aesthetics. And like, as I said earlier, because safety seems to take back seat. Not sorry, part of the plan. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Yeah. Well, I remember even talking to Ed Niedermeyer about some of the early Tesla models as well, right? And in that case, too, it was like there was this real focus on design and in particular, you know, what Elon Musk would want a car to look like and how he would want it to work. And that often led to like costs being blown out and you know, parts that were way more complex and difficult to like put together into the vehicle, but he didn't care because he wanted it to look this particular way. And it kind of feels like, you know, obviously we're talking about the door handles being one piece of this, but it feels like the Cybertruck is almost like the final version of like that goal because like it's so his own thing that it's almost unappealing to so much of the rest of the market, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Yeah, it's like that whole idea on steroids, honestly. Because it's yeah, it's the yeah, the design of the tucks crazy. Yeah, and and there's the whole whole chapter in that book too about how he was, you know, his insistence on that design and you know, being hardcore.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

I feel like there was also, I don't know if it was ever confirmed after, but there was this story that like when there was a lot of concern about the injuries inside the Tesla factory, I believe in Fremont, I think. Apparently, like yellow couldn't be used in the factory because Elon Musk didn't like the color or something like that, like to denote like things not being safe or whatnot. And I don't know if that was ever confirmed after, but it was like, yeah, that sounds right, especially based on what you're saying, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Oh God.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Yeah. But but like I'm not surprised to hear that, unfortunately. Safety is being traded off for aesthetics, and as you say, so many other car manufacturers have followed in the footsteps of Tesla, not just on the door handles, but on the big screens and you know, so many other different pieces of like what a vehicle should be and certainly what an electric car should be, which I think you know is a whole other discussion that that gets us to a place where electric cars are so expensive and you know treated more like luxury vehicles. But anyway, I want to get back to this question of safety and the effects of it, right? And we were talking about what it means then to try to get out of one of these vehicles. You know, it's so hard to find these release switches, especially if you're not familiar with it. Even if you're an owner, you might not be familiar with it, but certainly if you're a passenger who's not in these regularly. So can you start to talk to us about what we have been seeing when these vehicles get in the crashes and the difficulty that people have in actually getting out of the out of them and what you know the consequences are of that?

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Yeah. So in my story, so I overall I've trapped five fires in cyber trucks, three of which ended in vehicle entrapment for the people inside. Um, the other two did not, and they, but they did cause big fires. One of which was it is this cyber truck towing a wood chipper in Colorado. And I spoke to the I know it was it was pretty wild. Um, and I spoke to the the fire chief, and that is real rural region, and he's like, it damn near started a forest fire. Um took 30 firefighters to put it out. The cause it that's like the grass around started catching on fire. Yeah, they had they brought in like five different types of crews, like the Forest Service, and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Um so anyway, that's like a whole other discussion that we should return to, like the fires with the EVs and stuff, but please continue.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Yeah, yeah. So I there were three cases then bald field coal entrapment, uh, all of which I I pretty much profile completely in the story. They're all really horrifying. Two of them ended in death. One, the um passenger was able to get out, he was saved and had some kind of lucky elements when that happened. I started the story with this man, Michael Sheehan, who had just owned the cyber truck for three months. And he um, this was in Texas, and he'd been drinking and crashed the cyber truck. How I found out about all the details of that crash was I got police and autopsy reports, and they were extremely thorough. It was, I've never seen a police report like this. There were narratives from maybe 20 different officers all detailing what they saw. So I was able to kind of like piece together what happened from all of these stories, and it's it's it like chilled me to the bone. It's very, very scary. So what happened was the police arrived at the scene and to this, you know, massive fire. They couldn't see anyone inside the truck. So they assumed someone, the whoever was driving at whoever was in it, what had escaped the vehicle. So they started searching the perimeter for for humans. Um, meanwhile, they tried to put out the blaze, the police could not do it. I mean, they you started with a fire extinguisher, which in Tesla's emergency manual for first responders, they it says that you need, I think it's three to eight thousand gallons of water directly on the battery to extinguish fire on it. So, and they reignite, and there's all these issues with that. But the the firemen came, put out the fire, it took a long time, it kept reigniting. And then when the police went to go inspect the vehicle, they basically found like a spine. That's it. This man was basically cremated inside his cyber truck. It's very heartbreaking. They, you know, they were able to find out who the person was. And his family has, this is how I learned about it, is suing Tesla for faulty design. This is actually this is not my story, but it's really interesting and kind of chilling to me too, is that Tesla is trying to get the case moved to private arbitration. And the reason they can do that is because when you buy a Tesla, it's kind of like when you sign up for an app, like an Uber app, and you just scroll through the terms of an agreement and you're just like, okay, okay, agree, agree. And it's kind of similar when you buy a Tesla. And so deep within a lot of these like agreements that you're scrolling through, it's all, you know, online is arbitration. So if something happens, it has to be an arbitration. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

That also means that they can then hide more of these cases if they're out there and we don't know about them, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And they can hide the details of what happened because it's all private. There's nothing is in open court. And in this case, the the lawyers have been trying to get all of the data from the car, the camera, all the footage. I mean, there's a whole bunch. These cars are like massive computers and they're recording everything and and all elements of the car. And Tesla has refused to turn that over until the arbitration matters decided by the judge. It's yeah, it's really shocking.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

But it reminds me of that case, what was it, like last year, the year before, when uh Disney tried to get a lawsuit thrown out because people had accepted the terms and conditions on Disney Plus that said it should like go to arbitration or something like that. And it it had to do with something in their parks, but because they also had a Disney Plus subscription, Disney was trying to use it. Like, you know, it but it it's that kind of like wild thing where like the companies throw it in there because they know they can, because they know you're gonna accept the terms and conditions regardless, and then they can kind of turn that back against you, right, to try to evade accountability for for what they've done.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Right, exactly. It's really, it's yeah, there's so many elements to this. One of the other cases I looked at was this really, I mean, every single one of these kids is so awful. And this was the one in California, like right near where I live, and involved four college kids who were out, you know, the driver had been drinking, which the I why I mentioned that they're drinking, it doesn't matter in the the case of safety, but Tesla is like trying to prove negligence. Um so anyway, um, but those kids were in the truck. I can go into details of that, but for on the arbitration matter, the driver of the truck had was it was his grandfathers who had just previously died. So it was his deceased grandfather's, and but he had keys, and um, so the he they decided late at night to take it for a drive. And because of that, he didn't sign the arbitration agreement. So there's now three lawsuits in that case against Tesla. And I I mean, I think those will unless there's settlements, um, those will go to trial, which will be really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Definitely. And I guess on the settlement front, the company would be incentivized to try to do that. So there's not a ruling against them, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Right. And well and everything comes out in trial. So you know, it's just yeah, and they don't want us reporters getting our hands on all these internal documents. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Of course. And and they also don't want the public to have a better idea of what is going on with these vehicles, right? And kind of the safety risks that can come with that can come with using them because of the design that was pushed by Elon Musk.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Yeah. Yeah. And what we've seen with all these trials against Tesla over the past couple of years over its self full self-driving, is that, yeah, juries, the I mean, there was a huge jury settlement. I think one of the biggest in history against Tesla. Like they're not, they're not buying this um blame the victim and you know, other arguments that Tesla was bringing up. So yeah, it's it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

Yeah. Well, even when you were saying before that like some of these crashes happened while people were intoxicated, one of the first things that came to my mind was like, I wonder why the company isn't arguing, like, why aren't they using full self-driving or autopilot or something like that? It would have got them home safe, you know, like Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

It it's it's wild though. Like, especially to hear you talk about the details of these cases. And I know in one of them, I believe it was the California one, right? Like, part of the reason they were able to get out was because that one of the windows was ajar, or was that a that was another California one?

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Yeah, that was the one. So that involved this was such so interesting to me because it's the only account that we have right now of what it was like to be trapped inside a cyber truck. And that involved this kid who's a basketball star. He's gonna be a pro-basketball player. His father plays played for the Warriors, and he just seems like a really kind, sweet kid in all the press conferences I've watched with him. But he was driving back from the gym really early in the morning, and and he gave a long, detailed account of what happened during a press conference. And he said the steering wheel became unresponsive and he crashed into a fire hydrant in a tree. And, you know, it immediately caught fire. So, of course, like the doors wouldn't open, nothing worked. And he, and then there it was so full of smoke, he said, that he couldn't see outside. And he had passed out, and then he woke up and he's like, I need to stay awake, I need to stay awake. He had this whole like fight to live. Um, and he said he like bit his lips and like put his fingernails into his palms, trying to like keep himself awake, and he could hear people outside trying to help. And very luckily, his window was slightly cracked open. So they were trying to break the window. He was trying to break it, like kicking at it, and they were able to, they didn't break it because of the way these windows don't like break like a normal car window because they're so thickly laminated that they just kind of crumble. You have to kind of peel them. And you see that in the other case in in the Bay Area. So they were able to kind of like peel and crop this window back and and pull him out. And um, he was unconscious again by that point. He was then put into a medically induced coma because of the damage to his lungs. But he's he's okay now. He's back playing the basketball. But is the just the details of what happened were so harrowing and it so like interesting as someone who's been studying this to really know what it's like as awful as as you'd think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

And obviously he had no idea about this release valve that was there to try to open the door, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:40

No. That cybercheck, so they the fire men came, they eventually got it put out. I mean, it crashed into a fire hydrant, so it is it was like there's a bit weirdly, TMZ uh was like one of the first people on the scene. So they have all this video of it. Yeah, because he's a famous basketball player. And um the video, watching the video is really interesting. I mean, the fire hydrant is just like spewing like tons and tons of water and on the cyber truck, and which probably actually helped a bit. Um, but you know, it's just all of this water, and then the then the fire department came, they put it out, they towed the truck to the tow yard, and it caught on fire again in the tow yard tow yard. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Yeah, well, and I guess this goes back to what you were saying before. You know, in in this case, it was trying to peel the window back. And it was in the first case that you mentioned, it was actually using a tree branch to try to like destroy the windows and stuff, right? To to get them open. Like in both cases, I feel like that speaks to what you were saying earlier about okay, on the one hand, you have this discussion of the windows as being bulletproof and keeping you safe, but now when you're inside the vehicle trying to get out, you do not have the same, you know, ability to crack that glass to get out of it in the way that you would in a regular vehicle, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:57

I mean, it's it seems I just don't know how you'd get out. It's it's very, it's really scary. And then the the Northern California one with the four college students, there was a friend that was driving behind them, and he was able, so he was able to rescue just one of them, the and three died. But he was able to do that by breaking a window with a a large stick. And apparently, you know, the lawyers representing um one of the the families of one of the victims told me that he was he's like just like so full of adrenaline, and it wasn't like just like one hit. It was like banging, banging, banging, banging. And that was on the front seat. And then he got the so that passenger seat person out. And then he started trying to get the people out from the back seat, and the fire was just too intense, like to pull them out the front window. So he started to try and bake break the back window, and it just it wasn't possible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

Oh god.

unknown 39:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

I can only imagine what that must feel like like, you know, obviously people die, but then to also be the one who lives and to have tried to save your friends and not been able to do it, like must be harrowing.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

I know. And then we hadn't heard that incident happened. Um it was right it was like right after Thanksgiving in uh 2024. So we hadn't heard anything from the survivor about the cyber truck until until the day my story published, actually, just coincidentally. And he he is suing Tesla now too. He really like the injuries he sustained from the fire are are uh horrifying and will are life-changing. It's really scary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

Definitely, definitely. And like I feel like we're talking about this in the context of the cyber truck specifically, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

But as you've mentioned, there are issues with the door handles in Tesla vehicles more broadly. Is this a problem like in regular Tesla vehicles too, with people not being able to get out?

SPEAKER_00 40:11

Yeah, a hundred percent. So I mean it ha it's happened even more because not maybe not, I don't know if it's because there's more Tesla vehicles, but yes, there's many, many incidents of this happening. And Bloomberg really has like led the way in investigating this. They've tracked 140 complaints about vehicle entrapment in Teslas. And some of these entrapment issues involve, like, I mean, it's not as it could be dangerous, not as dangerous, but like a parent like putting their kid in the back seat, closing the door, and then like not being like the somehow the battery died and not being able to, so a kid's stuck inside. There's lots of incidents of those. And there's and it's really hard to get in. Like you have to break the windows. Yeah, there, and a lot of people have died the same way that of these incidents in the cyber truck. The I did like some kind of back of the knack, knack and math, and of what we know of the incidents that are out there, the cyber truck is disproportionately has more. You know, again, we don't totally have all the numbers and all the data. But given that there's fewer cyber trucks and there's already been all these incidents, it does show that there's like complications because of the design of the car on like first responder missions. And but yeah, there's there's really just as like I was writing the story, another incident happened in a Tesla and this young man, 20-year-olds, was burned to death um in a Tesla sedan. So it's it's an ongoing issue.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

Yeah, I I have a few questions on that front. So, first of all, you know, I'm sure you've probably seen this going around. I'm sure listeners have probably seen it as well. But there's this discussion that like the Cybertruck is worse than the Ford Pinto. And like the the Ford Pinto being this vehicle, uh, again, I don't know all the details, but like, you know, it had some real clear flaws with it, and it is part of, and the flaws that it had are part of what led to, you know, like the, I guess, the modern vehicle regulatory environment, safety regulatory environment, right? And this, you know, this suggestion is that like the degree of safety issues with seeing with the cyber truck are even worse than that. But I guess we're not seeing the same kind of like response to it, I guess. I I wonder what you make of that like comparison and you know the issue of whether we're doing enough to address these safety concerns with cybertrunks.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Yeah, yeah. So that it the cyber truck, like if you just look at the basic, you know, again, like back of neck knack and math, is has proven to be more deadly than the pinto. And I think the pinto analysis, like we all know the pinto was bad, but also pinto's caught on fire. So there's that same um issue that's happening. The United States, it's NHTSA, the National Highway Safety Traffic Transportation Traffic Administration. I always get it wrong.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

I always get there's like two, and I always get them messed up of what exactly the words are. So it's okay, you get a pass on this.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Yeah, okay. NHTSA. We know it's NHTSA. They're the ones that do safety tests. And in fact, they've given um cyber checks a five-star safety review the top um in the two years that it's been out. And and it does do really well in crash tests, as as we've seen even in these incidents. Like these people did not suffer like brute force injuries. The crashes were survivable, um, but they couldn't get out. And that's one thing NHTSA does not test for is egress, it's called. And um, when I spoke to the spokesperson at NHTSA, they said, you know, we might do, we're looking into egress, we might do it, you know. So it's it's definitely seems like it's on their minds. NHTSA is this big bureaucratic agency, and they they told me they look at every single complaint, they know of every incident that's in the news, they're studying it, and there's like these protocols they have to take before they take action. They have been looking into the case where the the four college students were in the cyber truck crash, but they have not opened an investigation. And it's it's kind of unclear why. I don't know if they're waiting for more information. And I don't know like what level it has to get to for them to do an investigation. I spoke to a former, the former head of NHTSA, and and she was really adamant um that, you know, they're doing the best they can and they they are paying attention to all these safety issues. You know, a lot of these federal agencies have been stripped of employees and money. And so I I don't know how much that's affected NHTSA, but you have to imagine that that is playing into some of this, like what appears to be like inaction. But they did, they have recently did two recalls on the door. Was it was recalls? Maybe it's investigations into the door handles of um two different Tesla sedan models.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

Gotcha. Yeah, I I guess for me it's like I look at it from the outside, right? You know, not knowing exactly how the agency operates on the inside. And and it just becomes like, are they scared to go after someone like Elon Musk because of like how powerful he is? And like how many bodies need to pile up before something is actually done about this? You know, like it makes you a bit disillusioned, I think, seeing how it plays out.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Yeah, I don't, you know, it's hard to tell. I don't know if they're scared about Elon Musk. They definitely like do a lot of recalls. The Tesla, the first year of the Tesla, the 2024 model had 10 recalls, one of which included an accelerator that stuck at full throttle.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

I would I remember that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Otherwise, like the door panels flying off. I was just, yeah, it's um can't make this stuff up. It's yeah, it's just really hard to tell. And and it's since it is this big bureaucratic body, I'm sure they have like all these like levels they have to go through before they can reach like an investigation stage, recall stage. What's interesting is, you know, all their complaints are public. So you can just like scroll through the complaints of each model of vehicle. And there, yeah, there's a lot of the cyber trust. And and they themselves like take these complaints into account. So I don't know if it has to reach like a critical mass, but it is like all these people dying because of the door handles is a serious problem. And uh regulators in other places are looking at it. China is looking at banning these like flush electric door handles. There's been a lot of incidents with um electric cars in China that have copied the Tesla aesthetic that where people have died. So it does seem though that if they should already be doing something. I don't know, it's been kind of a long time.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

Yeah. Well, and and this is the other piece of it, right? Like we can talk about the regulatory side. And as you say, you know, in China and Europe, it feels like things are moving a bit faster on the door handles in particular. But then the other flip side of that is like if you're a company like Tesla and you are seeing all of these instances of your customers getting in the crashes, getting stuck in their cars, having their kids being stuck in cars, you know, and potentially dying when their cars catch on fire and they're trapped inside. Like, how have you not acted sooner to address this issue? Because it's not something, as you're saying, it's not something that's just been happening for the past couple of years since the Cybertruck was released. We've also had this with regular Teslas, you know, Tesla sedans and and crossovers and stuff for quite some time now.

SPEAKER_00 47:56

Yeah. Yeah, like a decade.

SPEAKER_01 47:58

Do we see any movement from Tesla here? Like, do you have an idea of why they haven't acted faster to address this?

SPEAKER_00 48:05

I'm I I can only speculate, and I imagine it's Musk's love for the door handles. Bloomberg did uh an interview with their head designer, and he so I'll just to backtrack a little bit, like other car manufacturers for their emergency release, if you're stuck in the car, their manual release is some kind of intuitive mechanism that's built into the door handles from the inside. So a lot of them will have like if you pull twice, it will open. And and or you can pull really hard, like bending the handle back. In this interview that Bloomberg did with the engineer at Tesla, he was like, Yeah, they asked him about that and um having a kind of a manual release that's intuitive mechanism that involves a latching system. And he's like, Yeah, that kind of makes sense. I I can see that. Where you know, you just like pull one button and you're free.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

So it's like, okay, so why not do it?

SPEAKER_00 49:05

Yeah, they're definitely, well, just this week news came out. It wasn't big news. Well, it wasn't, it wasn't in like widespread in mainstream publications, but in their cyber cab, which is Tesla's autonomous, oh God, I'm I'm nervous for these things. Um, their self-driving cars.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Don't even get me started. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:27

They have put this mechanism, this like quick release way to get out of the car for in the cyber cabs, which thank goodness. But it's definitely the company is thinking about it, and they for the first time ever have put something like that in one of their cars.

SPEAKER_01 49:44

Yeah. And so again, then I guess the question is like, how long until that actually rolls out to the ones that most people are using now? And and, you know, obviously you're I get I assume you're not going to be able to go back and change the vehicles that are out there, unless, I don't know, that maybe they can do a software update where if you pull really hard, I I don't know how all that no, but I guess if it's the electronics, they can't do it because they need a physical component, right?

SPEAKER_00 50:06

It needs like a latching mechanism.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

Right. So yeah, so it would still be in cars, you know, being sold in the future. But it's like, why do all the 2026 models not have this in there if they know it's an issue and have known it's an issue for a while now? Obviously, we know a lot about Elon Musk at this point, right? But it's like, what is the value of human life to you? We know it's probably not a ton, uh, but like these people are paying you a lot of money for their cars. Like, can you not do the like bare minimum to keep them safe? I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Yeah, I know. It's it's really uh perplexing. I I it's hard for me to understand, actually.

SPEAKER_01 50:48

I I completely agree. Uh I wonder, you know, as as we wrap up this interview, you know, this has been really insightful to learn about what is going on with these cyber trucks, but also Tesla more broadly and why we really need more attention on this issue, which which luckily your story provides uh and and hopefully has informed a lot of people about what's happening, you know, not least of which Tesla owners or Tesla passengers who might need to know about this if something goes wrong, right? And and where to find these. But I wonder, are there any other pieces of your story that we didn't discuss that really like stand out to you as something that people should know about? Or or where do you think that this is potentially going from here?

SPEAKER_00 51:23

Yeah, well, one thing that's uh interesting is this isn't Tesla, but you know, we talked a lot about those electric vehicle batteries and how flammable they are. And in general, I think it's important to state that electric vehicles have shown to be safer than gas-powered vehicles, even with this, these highly flammable batteries, and they actually catch on fire less often. This is electric vehicles as a whole. And so it's this isn't an issue with electric vehicles, it's really a Tesla issue and involves this entrapment, which is the, you know, the thing that's really getting people in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 52:01

That's really good to know. I I've often wondered as well, at some point I should look into this. Like Norway has such a high degree of electric vehicle penetrat penetration. And when you talk about like, you know, the electric vehicles catching on fire and having to be doused with so much water to put them out and keep them out. Part of me wonders like, have the Norwegian firefighters like figured out something that we need to learn where they have so many more electric vehicles on the roads? Like, that's that's something for me to maybe look into. But yeah, it's something I wonder about.

SPEAKER_00 52:28

Yeah, I mean, there a lot of the safety experts I spoke to also said this is like a learning curve for firefighters because that how to deal with um electric vehicles. And then with Tesla's with Cybertruck, that's even more complicated because it's such a unique and different vehicle that they they're just they're not trained, and it's rare, they're just not trained on how to deal with like first response um in the way they would be with, you know, a Honda.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

Totally. Yeah. A Honda Civic. They see those all the time. They know what to do with something like that, right?

unknown 53:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:01

Awesome. No, uh, this has been really insightful, Dara. It's it's been really great to learn more about this, and and I'm sure that the listeners have as well. You know, we hear about these stories, but you know, it's harrowing to hear about some of the experiences that that you're talking about. Uh, but hopefully we're heading in a direction where this is going to be addressed soon. And hopefully Tesla will have to, you know, be held accountable for for what it has done to people by choosing design over safety.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

Yeah, it's gonna be really interesting to see um as these lawsuits continue. There's several lawsuits also on the exact same issue for Tesla sedans, all and they're all over faulty design, wrongful death lawsuits. So yeah, it's gonna be really interesting, and maybe, maybe that's what'll spur the change.

SPEAKER_01 53:44

Yeah. Hopefully. Dara, it's been really great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 53:49

Thanks for having me on. This is fun is not the right word, but I really enjoyed being on.

SPEAKER_01 53:56

Dara Kerr is a tech reporter at The Guardian US. Tech Won's Save Us was made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kylie Houston. Tech Won's Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters and help us hit our goal as the show celebrates its sixth birthday by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and becoming a supporter today. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week.