A Tesla Cybertruck 'blew up' outside Trump's hotel in Las Vegas | Hacker News Reader

A Tesla Cybertruck 'blew up' outside Trump's hotel in Las Vegas

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77 pointswslh37 comments

I wonder why the person stayed inside the vehicle. Did they not know it was on fire? Were they unable to exit the vehicle as the fire disabled the doors? Some other reason?

It would be scary if the reason is because the fire made it so the doors wouldn't open.

EDIT: The article has been updated since I first posted the question. Now there are reports that it might be a possible suicide type action. But I imagine it is still too early to tell.

Well, authorities are investigating it as a possible terror attack, and apparently it had "fireworks-style mortars" inside so I suspect this wasn't a garden-variety Cybertruck malfunction.

https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/police-treating-vehicle-ex...

Fireworks are the only thing that makes sense.

The videos show a large explosion but there isn't a single window at the front of the hotel that shows damage.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/01/us/cybertruck-fire-trump-hote...

According to this article, there was also "gas tanks and camping fuel" inside the truck.

consumer fireworks (1.4g) cannot blow up like this, by design and regulation. fire marshals can and do enforce this at points of sale & distribution

professional fireworks are also regulated to minimize mass-explosion risk.

if fireworks were involved in the explosion, it would necessarily be an improvised device. achieving this level of explosion with consumer fireworks would be difficult. the fireworks are a red herring, imo.

Video of it exploding def shows fireworks going off everywhere, but to your point, trunk looks stocked with loads of diff stuff: https://x.com/BNODesk/status/1874610151959019812/photo/1

I want to know more too. My understanding is these vehicles will only light on fire like this if the battery experiences thermal runaway, which means the battery is toast at that point I would imagine? I've heard when the battery goes in a model 3, the doors don't work normally and you need an emergency release. That said, 1 dead 7 injured... I imagine there was more than one in the vehicle?

This isn’t what thermal runaway looks like. Someone set off those fireworks, or they were somehow ignited.

the image in the article is a truck completely engulfed in flames, I'm not sure how you can deduce "not thermal runaway" by that. edit: I see the video now, I see your point

Electric cars don't burn more often than gas cars. And most electric car fires don't involve the high voltage battery at all, but originate in the 12 volt wiring. That said, high voltage battery fires do happen, and they are much harder to put out.

>Electric cars don't burn more often than gas cars.

But when they do, even the fire department can't reliably take out the fire...

They can, but they need to learn the proper techniques. In a country like Norway with a high proportion of electric cars, I think all fire departments know the drill by now – even if they never had to do it themselves. Most important: Don’t stop fighting the fire the moment it’s out, or it will reignite. You need to keep cooling the battery pack a long time.

I would imagine the doors run off of the 12v system (or maybe 48v these days?) for safety reasons. The emergency release for the doors is for when that system fails.

The high voltage battery can actually sometimes be completely disconnected from the car during normal use, e.g. when parked and no sentry mode enabled.

The doors in older Model S versions had a single lever that would trigger the electronic window controls slightly before you pull hard enough to mechanically release the door. A complete electrical failure would not make it any harder to get the door open or even require additional thought, although it might be mildly impolite to the window seals and politely a bit more than mildly impolite if the door is closed hard before the electrical system wakes up.

I have no idea why Tesla changed this.

yes, and it looks like this would be a scenario where the battery is totaled (unless fireworks?), which means doors are locked shut from inside and outside.

Damn, that is a lot of fireworks going off. I am sure this won't stop people from blaming EVs.

A couple terror attacks using the batteries in an EV would quickly kill adoption in the US

Unfortunately you are probably correct, EVs are already politicised and uninformed knee-jerk reactions are bound to occur.

The general public isn’t informed enough to realise that there are several different battery chemistries, with some of them like LFP only providing minimal smoke when drilled into. Even the more volatile types are drastically less likely to be involved in vehicle fires than ICE cars.

In the UK we recently had a car park fire at an airport that everyone started blaming EVs for and it turned out to be a straight (non-hybrid) diesel car.

Regardless of what started it, a car park fire with EVs involved is more concerning

That’s the naive assumption, but we have had massive car park fires in times when EVs were much less prevalent:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-46290095

And research into car park fires in post-EV times may also not support that theory:

https://www.ri.se/sites/default/files/2020-12/FRIC%20D1.2-20...

> Electric vehicles: Observations during the fire indicate that electric vehicles did not contribute to the fire development beyond what is expected from conventional vehicles.

Probably no big deal for fire development, but throws a spanner in the works for successfully extinguishing it

Indeed, but ICE cars aren’t exactly easy to extinguish either. Here is the diesel car that started the fire at Luton. Notice the fire extinguishers around it? They obviously weren’t enough.

https://twitter.com/andysoullinux/status/1712232395049422942

>ICE cars aren’t exactly easy to extinguish either.

Still much much easier.

Than? An EV with an LFP battery? Nope. One with an NMC battery? Yes.

We can’t make blanket statements with EVs which was the whole point of my original post.

Edit: from the article:

> Fire crews were on scene within four minutes, and the fire was put out within an hour.

Pretty sure the cybertruck is NMC too, and this is in addition to the fuel canisters and explosives in the vehicle.

There's more energy in the full tank of an F-150 than a charged cybertruck battery by a small multiple

Why waste a perfectly good Cybertruck ? Model Y also has plenty of room, and it can also drive itself.

Even new those aren't perfectly good.

It was rented from Turo.

No such thing as wasting a Cybertruck.

Video of the explosion: https://x.com/FaytuksNetwork/status/1874541150406861288

Wow. Scary. Quality is hard to tell but I don't see big indications of the vehicle on fire before it does explode.

/r/cyberstuck has a longer video. My non-professional eye can't see any smoke prior to the explosion. A Reddit Investigator in the thread provided the first frame of the explosion and it does appear to be coming from underneath the vehicle.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberStuck/comments/1hrafib/cybertr...

Not a specialist, but it doesn't look like a traditional fire battery to me. Also, was that fireworks after the explosion?

Looks like fireworks were stacked inside the car.

And there was tanks of gas and camping fuel.

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