The fact that the body is undentable and glass is unbreakable makes it sound worse for occupants, too. If it doesn’t crumple, you’re going to be in for a bad time in a car accident.
A similar situation occurred with bull bars in the UK. They protected the car they were fitted to at the expense of the person you hit. They were banned after public outcry - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bull-bars/bull-ba...
Your link explicitly states they are not banned.
> However, since 25 May 2007, it has been an offence for bull bars that have not been approved as compliant with those safety standards to be sold.
The point of the comment you are replying to is that it would be rather unreasonable to assume that.
Dents are just a minor form of crumpling.
Exterior bodywork work is irrelevant to occupant crash safety performance on unibodies (or space frames, like the Saturn S series), because they’re non structural elements. They’re decorative. Soft metal is chosen because it’s cheap to produce, not because it’s a crumple zone.
Crumple zones on unibody cars today are made of much stronger steel than the body is, and the channels are in the unibody frame which are slightly inboard from the sides of the car.
If you hit the crumple zones of a regular car on the road today with a sledgehammer, they wouldn’t dent. You’d need to hit them with something imparting many thousands of times as much force, like a car.
The only safety benefit to soft body panels is pedestrian safety.
aka "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?"
Seriously though, crumple zones in cars and trucks aren't the sheet metal on the body.
I'm sure Tesla thought about safety ratings. My guess is the "cyber truck"'s sheet metal will crumple in an accident. A car wreck has a lot more force than some guy swinging a sledgehammer at medium force.
And I think we're all pretty sure that Elon overrode those designers and demanded a design and materials that wouldn't crumple.
There's a big difference to "stands up to parking lot car doors and shopping carts" and assuming that it doesn't crumple in a collision with another vehicle.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyamohn/2019/10/20/starflatio...
"But the once groundbreaking program is now out of date and has not kept pace with safety innovations and advances, and other countries, including Japan and many in Europe, have far surpassed the U.S., motor vehicle safety experts say"
[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/saf...
I think we have to wait for crash tests.
(I am unaware if trucks have the same standards for crash testing)
The only thing they demonstrated is that it doesn't dent easily when hit by a sledge hammer swung horizontally.
Side-impact tests in particular will benefit from the stronger door skin. There's not much space for crumpling in that direction, and your average mild-steel door doesn't do particularly well. They generally throw reinforcement beams inside the door in an effort to help.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out since the Cybertruck is combining unibody+skateboard+pickup+stainless steel. The frunk is a huge crumple zone with no ICE and transmission to get in the way. I don't see the stainless steel "exoskeleton" preventing the frunk from crumpling in a real crash. It might prevent getting dents from stupid people in parking lots and utility work though.
The partial overlap frontal collision has been an especially bad one for pickups historically IIRC. This vehicle might completely change that. Would love to hear from anyone more knowledgeable in this field.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/03/21/iihs-gm...
The cybertruck isn't really any more innovative than the Honda Ridgeline in this regard.
Trucks and old cars are body on frame, modern cars and some small trucks (e.g. Ridgeline, Baja, Brat, El Camino, Ranchero, most utes) are unibody. Some like the original Jeep Cherokee are hybrids.
That’s in contrast to trucks and old cars where there is a frame and the interior of the vehicle is separate.
Obviously the truck is going to pass safety tests. Having a soft exterior that gives-in is not all there is to car safety...
> [safety standards] may be something the Tesla Cybertruck needs to put more focus on, according to the head of the Australasian New Car Assessment Program, which is Australia's equivalent of the US-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
> Cybertruck's "exoskeleton" body material caused some alarm as well. ANCAP looks for vehicles to absorb some of the energy in an impact because, if it doesn't, passengers will bear the brunt of the force.
> While this material may be perfect to keep out dents ... it could put passengers at risk.
By the way,
> Having a soft exterior that gives-in is not all there is to car safety...
I totally agree[1]:
> Obviously, the Cybertruck cannot enter production in its current form. It's missing windshield wipers, traditional mirrors that are, right now, required for the US market and the pickup also lacks turn signals. The challenge will be turning this trapezoidal design into something approved for sale in markets around the world
[1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-cybertruck-design-s...
I think this crumple b.s. is made-up non-sense by car manufacturers (it might have minimal marginal impact and would like to be proven wrong). By making my car front bumper a weak piece of plastic that gets scratched and damaged very easily, they can sell it later for $1.000 a piece.