Tuv sees black for Tesla: Cybertruck would not get approval in Europe
en24.news
en24.news
Since virtually no one drives gigantic american-style pickups in EU, it makes no sense for Tesla to develop a separate alternative EU-regulation-compatible version based on totally different manufacturing design.
I think it's pretty dishonest that Tesla asks for deposits for Cybertruck over here, since I believe they don't plan to ever sell them to us.
And I'm saying that as a person who likes Tesla, Inc. very much.
Come to Romania. You'd be surprised.
There's a lot of loopholes they can use to get this approved, if they should need them.
Farmers and other people who work in land industries use them all over the world. Have you been out of a city much? What do you think they use instead? The brands just tend to be Japanese outside the US.
>According to a TUV expert
for anyone reading this outside Germany, thats a Technical Inspection Association. pretty vague as to what it does in the 21st century pertaining to vehicles specifically though...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technischer_%C3%9Cberwachungsv...
>because the inmates were not safe.
the nearly unilaterally agreed upon english definition for an inmate is not the same as passenger.
>sees black
in english, seeing black is a finance colloquialism at best. at worst, its a pejorative for racist tendencies. im guessing its a different sentiment in Germany entirely.
>Nothing is deformed in the event of an impact, instead enormous forces act on the occupants," says Teller in the "Automobilwoche". "Airbags will no longer help."
This is wildly speculative conjecture based on a single marketing event. No technical authority would ever dream of basing their evaluation on it...unless you wanted to get your name in the press alongside a hot new vehicle.
The concept we're trying to get at here is called a crumple zone. Tesla S, tesla 3, and virtually every other mass produced vehicle on the planet have them as part of a standard safety requirement. There is no reason to propose teslas new truck would not include them.
The article also completely ignores the long standing tradition of safety approval for bullet-proof vehicles. Mercedes G500 and BMW 7 series fitted with rigid armour plating and bulletproof glass are all approved for use in the EU and US. As for unibody vs body on frame construction, youre wrong. body on frame vehicles cannot BY DESIGN have crumple zones to protect pedestrians, and often score lower on crash tests as a result. https://autoreviewhub.com/unibody-vs-body-on-frame/
Are you a native speaker? I've never heard 'seeing black' said in a racial sense. It is however colloquially used (in the UK at least).
I think it's also an idiom in German (my wife, a German, uses it often). Also not in a racist sense - also simply meaning, to 'see nothing good about' something.
Eg: a company might "hope to see black by then end of Q3."
So the headline baffled me.
Also the English term for this type of reporting is “clickbait”.
This is exactly what I was wondering about the minute I saw the Cybertruck presentation. In the event of a crash, the stiffness would be horrible for people in or outside of the vehicle.
It’s entirely possible Tesla will throw that all away with Cybertruck, but is that likely?
The video: https://mobile.twitter.com/langejanne/status/120377531270789...
The argument is that they have shipped 3 cars in Europe. All their cars got among the best, if not the best, crash test ratings by every government and non-profit agency that tested their cars.
They deserve benefit of the doubt because they've demonstrated several times that they know what they're doing.
A can't say the same about randos speculating how Tesla will fail to certify their 5th or 6th car in Europe (after Model Y and possibly Roadster and Semi).
Being a TUV expert doesn't really make up for the fact that the guy is commenting based on a video of an early prototype.
Not to mention that people seem to arguing that Cybertruck is not safe... for other cars.
Hummer was sold in Europe. Tell me again how stupidly large and heavy cars can't possibly be certified for European sales.
Also, in the EU, no car manufacturer self-certifies. In Germany for example it's the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (similar to the American DOT) that certifies vehicles to be street-legal.
I don't believe you need to be recertified per se. As far as I know, you need a medical exam but that aside it's an administrative procedure.
Manufacturers' optimisations for making their cars enticing to you does not mean they have to put a lot of thought in making their cars safe for _others_ on the road.
Safety Regulation is there to make sure those constraints are given a high priority in the design of equipment so it doesn't kill you, your passengers or the people around you.
It does if it is important for customer. And even if it doesn't - it doesn't mean they will make it dangerous for pedestrians. Furthermore, regulations come from what market innovates. An imperfect analogy on why regulations don't always bring best results: having side mirrors is incredibly important safety regulation. That is of course until you can introduce better safety by not having them, but regulation prevents you from doing so (cameras)
If a car costs $1,000 less but would catch fire in an instant when turned on its roof, people would opt for the money, I guarantee you that, because when was the last time you car was upside down?
From 2000 to 2010 Toyota used cheap materials in their cars that made cars accelerate and crash. It's estimated that 89 people died due to this in the US alone.
Your blind believe in "the market" is simply wrong. Without regulatory oversight, this might never have come to light and you would still see Toyotas running into barriers or Fords burning after an accident. Just you wouldn't actually know about it because it's relatively rare.
Yes, we do. The recommendation for car to have easily-deformable zone in the front was based on thousands of crash-tests. Musk might be your superhero, but he still cannot bypass basic laws of physics.
In fact, I'm willing to bet they thought about it a hell of a lot more than people speculating who were not involved in the design process.
let's wait and see what happens, rather than through out wild speculation. (but then, the internet would be pointless I guess)
EDIT: See my reply further down with links to all the safety records Tesla have set.
Also, my point still stands. It's almost a certainty Tesla have spent many millions of dollars and thousands and thousands of design hours on the safety of the Cybertruck, while literally everyone commenting on it (including this expert from Europe) has spent zero.
Its rather obvious that a car that has a rigid metal structure does not allow many avenues to channel the force of impact - so woe the pedestrian that's hit by a Cybertruck.
No way European regulators - which actually certify and regulate rather than rubber-stamp manufacturers' own views - can let it go through in its current shape and form.
Obviously he knows what he's talking about when it comes to safety and vehicles. I think it's safe to say he knows very, very little about the Cybertruck yet.
This is 100% pure speculation, like almost everything about the Cybertruck on the internet so far.
What's your evidence for this extraordinary claim?
IIHS rates the model S as acceptable to good, the model 3 rates good across the board and is a top pick alongside dozens of others, and with six vehicles above it for year 2019. IIHS CRO stated unambiguously:
> I don’t think that our results bear out that it’s the safest car ever
Going with EuroNCAP instead and looking at just 2019 large family car[0] the model 3 does stand out in "safety assistance", it's on par for occupants and non-occupants, and widely beaten by the BMW Series 3 in that latter category.
[0] https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-ra...
GP's claim is not that they're very good, or even exceptional, it's that
> Tesla have designed and currently sell the three safest vehicles ever produced in the history of the world
The only place this sort of shit comes from is Tesla's marketing copies, which is the same singularly dishonest place that brought us "autopilot" for glorified driving assistance.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/model-3-lowest-probability-injury...
Model X first and only SUV to get 5 starts from the Euro NCAP:
https://www.tesla.com/blog/model-x-earns-5-star-safety-ratin...
Model X first SUV to get get 5 stars in every category from NHSTA:
https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-model-x-5-star-safety-ratin...
Model S best safety rating of any car ever tested:
https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-model-s-achieves-best-safet...
Quote from Euro N-Cap themselves: "The stand-out performer of this round is undoubtedly Tesla’s Model X, scoring 94 percent for Safety Assist, the same as the Model 3 scored early this year. This makes the two Teslas the best performers in this part of the assessment against Euro NCAP’s most recent protocols"
https://www.euroncap.com/en/press-media/press-releases/best-...
I could keep Googling... I'm sure there's an award they got for one of the vehicles being the first ever to get 5 stars in North America AND Europe. I think it was the X or the S.
It's not even the only SUV to get 5 stars from 2019: https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-ra...
You managed to out-shill tesla's own marketing copy, your link merely states that it got 5 stars from NCAP and outlines points they think are of interest. At no point do they state it's the "first and only SUV" to get 5 stars from either NCAP or NHTSA (they do state it's the first and only SUV to get 5 stars in every single category and sub-category which is an impressive claim but much less so than your statement).
> Quote from Euro N-Cap themselves: "The stand-out performer of this round is undoubtedly Tesla’s Model X, scoring 94 percent for Safety Assist, the same as the Model 3 scored early this year. This makes the two Teslas the best performers in this part of the assessment against Euro NCAP’s most recent protocols"
I don't know if you can't read the quote you provide or you don't remember your original statement: this praises safety assistance, it doesn't say that it's "the […] safest vehicles ever produced in the history of the world".
> I could keep Googling…
Yes I'm sure you could keep shilling, and, frankly, lying.
I don't even understand why you keep doing that, Tesla absolutely does get impressive results and are at the top of the pack, had that been your assertion that would've ben fine, and would have supported your point (regardless of your point being somewhat off from the article's explicit concerns about pedestrian safety on which Tesla scores are generally good but in the low 70s where other cars manage 80s and even the rare low 90s for the Z4[0] and the CLA[1]).
[0] https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/bmw/z4/38091
[1] https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/mercedes-benz/cla-class/...
If it's the first and only SUV to get 5 stars in every single category and sub-category.... doesn't that make it the safest ever, by ver definition?
If not, why not?
Also it's odd you use the word "claim". There are no "claims" here, there are factual safety ratings by independent government bodies. The NHTSA is not "claiming" it gets 5 starts in every category and sub-category, they are factually stating that it does. It sounds like you're trying to use language to make facts seen less like facts and more like opinions. Please don't do that, it's very dishonest.
Ah I see we've gotten to the "moving the goalposts" part of your refusal to ever acknowledge your lies.
> Also it's odd you use the word "claim".
I fail to see how, though not being a native speaker I'm sure there are better synonyms available.
> The NHTSA is not "claiming" it gets 5 starts in every category and sub-category, they are factually stating that it does.
The subject of the phrase is Tesla not NHTSA. NHTSA gave Tesla the score, Tesla states the score they got, it's a claim.
> It sounds like you're trying to use language to make facts seen less like facts and more like opinions. Please don't do that, it's very dishonest.
I guess we can tack on a complete lack of honour to your repeatedly established lack of honesty, and with that I'm done with this "discussion".
Nobody can plausibly claim that Teslas aren't incredibly safe cars, but "Safest on the planet" is not substantiated, and in particular the exact point under discussion here is pedestrian safety, and the ratings substantiate the claim that this is not one of the areas in which Tesla has a lead. https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-ra...
I've never seen anything to suggest that Tesla cars are the safest available. They generally appear in the top group on rankings but I've not seen any where they actually had the top spots.
Maybe you could point me to some?
edit: thanks for the replies. I somehow thought if you get hit as a pedestrian it's super bad anyways... didn't know the crumple zone does much for you there.
it is generally very bad for the person who gets hit by the car
In a situation where maybe both would have survived otherwise, now at least one party is goo.
It's a Prisoner's Dilemma. If everyone drives fat, rigid SUVs, I gotta do to. That's why there is a law
Ncap includes these tests and it seems they're more interested in flexibility in that case, not in crumbling.
A crumple zone in an EV is pretty simple though, since you don't have to worry about the heavy engine getting shoved into the front passengers.
I'm not sure why it's such a popular notion that the cybertruck won't crumple? It's literally got a big empty space at the front as a feature.
Ordinary cars crumple but they don't fall apart if you lean on them or drive down a bumpy road. They have strength in some situations and specially designed failure modes in others.
It could be as simple as putting some scores in the metal so that it folds in a particular way when sufficient force is applied.
Because it's supposed to be bulletproof and have a virtually indestructible surface which you cannot dent or scratch. It's possible that this was meant as nothing more than resistance to minor assault but taking the statement literally and assuming a completely rigid reinforced frame makes a lot of sense.
> Ordinary cars crumple but they don't fall apart if you lean on them or drive down a bumpy road.
Ordinary cars are not billed as bulletproof and virtually indestructible.
Different properties. Bulletproof vests are flexible and distribute the force rather than being just hard and heavy for example. Diamonds are scratch resistant, but shatter.
Until we see the actual tests, it's all just speculation with minimal information. Resisting a hammer does not prove anything about collisions.
Yes it is.
Crumple zones are designed to both avoid going straight through through whatever they hit (which is usually an other car, though avoiding pasting pedestrian is also a good idea if you can), and disperse the energy of the collision to provide progressive deceleration.
Rigid frames are the original state of cars design, and it was bad, because when the car does not absorb the impact and progressively decelerate (again thanks to crumple zones) all the force of the crash ends up with the vehicle's occupants. Which is the exact opposite of what you're looking for: you want to sacrifice what's outside the safety cell in order to limit or nullify damage inside the safety cell (companies are even working on "sledding" the survival cell and adding dedicated shock absorbers, especially in smaller city cars where there isn't much space for crumple zones to do their work)./
Given the fact that the rest of Teslas fleet has excellent ratings in that regard Ì‘m quite sure that this concept is not exactly new for their engineers.
I‘m again not impressed by TÜV.
A security risk?
The key to safety is human error prevention, not materials. It’s like preventing illness vs. treating the symptoms.
On the other side, It’s very questionable when the fully-autonomous driving will be ready.
Do an image search for "svbied".
It must have been flagged or triggered something.
I don't know where you got this idea. Renault makes the Twizy and the ZOE, both small electric cars. BMW makes the i3.
The automotive press is traditionally very biased against electric vehicles, which might have contributed to this article.
The Renault Zoe is increasingly common here in the UK, the electric Fiat 500 has been around for a while now, VW have an extensive range, BMW have at least a couple I'm aware of. A significant number of the suggested cars in this list are made by European manufacturers
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/best-cars/electric-cars/86169/...