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Comment by topspin | Hacker News Reader

"3 ton electric truck"

Elon stated that Cybertruck will weigh about 7000 lbs. That's 3.5 tons.

That's the same mass as an F-350 DRW (dual rear wheel) loaded with options.

Seriously heavy. I'm not anti heavy vehicles or anything; I have a 3/4 ton truck myself (~5200 lbs.) I just think it's eye opening just how heavy these EVs are.

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A Rivian R1S is 8,500 lbs. These electric SUV's are insanely heavy. Like heavy enough a standard passenger vehicle driver's license shouldnt apply. A 8,500lbs suv with sports car acceleration. We're gonna see the pedestrian vehicle death record go up every year.

I thought the biggest driver in The USA for truck v pedestrian deaths is the hood height issue and not really weight. There just isn't enough difference there to matter while hood heights approaching 6 feet are becoming standard in new trucks.

Height wouldn’t be bad if they gave it more angles than a gas stove. Consider a prius, the car is literally just a bulbous doorstop. That is so much better for pedestrian safety because they just roll up and off. NHTSA is clearly corrupt for allowing those beastly trucks and suvs on our roads. No engineer would have signed off on those.

For (~100kg) pedestrian, I am sure the difference in lethality from being hit by a 1000kg vehicle vs a 3000kg vehicle is insubstantial. Where the weight would matter is for vehicle-vehicle collisions.

The vast majority of pedestrians survive getting hit by a car, not all incidents happen at highway speeds. A difference between a mass of 1 and 3 tons would absolutely make a difference in lethality.

Dubious claim. A vehicle might as well be a wall with infinite mass vs a pedestrian. Deformation, breaking and being passed out of the way are what counts.

8000 pedestrians killed vs 104,000 emergency visits for non fatal crash related injuries:

https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/i...

Weight is directly called out as a factor:

> SUVs can cause more harm to a person on foot when a crash occurs because of their greater body weight and larger profile

I think its more that you are liable to roll off a car vs get exploded from an suv.

I think they were probably referring to the handling of such a ridiculously heavy car.

I read somewhere that todays vehicles and the trend towards heavier vehicles is damaging older parking houses and roads.

Yes. Some of the environmental benefits of EVs will be offset by the increased road maintenance they'll require.

Of course, the same could be said about unnecessarily enormous ICE vehicles people drive nowadays too.

Vehicle weight really ought to be taxed.

An interesting thing I've read re: passenger car weights is that even though there are continuous gains in weight reduction (for eg by using composites), the overall weight has stayed the same/gone up for decades due to more safety devices/crash zones etc. It appears to be the hardware equivalent of Wirth's/Bill's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law).

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