New owners of Tesla’s sleek, stainless steel Cybertruck may want to watch their fingers close the electric car’s doors and forward-facing trunk.
Reviewers have conducted a now-viral “carrot test” and other experiments with hot dogs, bananas and other foods to simulate what would happen to passengers’ hands and fingers — discovering a horrifying “guillotine effect.”
The $80,000 truck — which has been plagued by production issues — doesn’t feature anti-pinch sensors like Tesla’s own Model X and rival electric trucks like Ford’s F-150 Lightning.
‘I’m just going to close the door like a normal person closes the door. Nothing too hard,” said one reviewer just before gently showing the Cybertruck’s driver’s side door and chopping off the ends of two large, sturdy carrots.
Owners of Tesla’s sleek, stainless steel Cybertruck may want to watch their fingers close the electric vehicle’s doors and forward-facing trunk. Reviewers performed a ‘carrot test’ for soft human appendages – discovering a horrifying ‘guillotine effect’
The tests, carried out by the team at Out of Spec reviews (above), showed that many electric vehicles can be risky to people’s appendages and their food products if they become trapped between the closing tailgate and the vehicle’s body.
“You might want to run your fingers around the Cybertruck,” said TikTok user @molescool put it. “You might end up losing them.”
The tests, conducted by the team of Out of specification Reviews found that many electric vehicles can be risky to people’s appendages and their food products if they become trapped between the closing tailgate and the vehicle’s body.
But the same cannot be said for other latches, such as car doors, truck tailgates and so-called ‘frunks’ (front trucks), with the Rivian R1T proving to be the safest of the current class of EV trucks.
Anti-pinch sensors and sensorless anti-pitch catches have been an increasingly common feature of vehicles since the early 2000s, especially on automatic windows, making these features unusual on the Cybertruck.
Infamously, an August 2016 Tesla software update removed the functionality of the squeeze sensors on the Model X’s futuristic gull-wing doors to prevent “phantom detections.”
“Some Model Automotive News noted at the time.
But what has made the Cybertruck uniquely more dangerous is that, as reviewers have noted, the vehicle’s stylish steel body has no radius on the edges of the panels.
‘Tesla ultimately decided to make the Cybertruck’s body panels from 1.8mm-thick stainless steel plates, which are not folded over into a seam at the edges,” a tech writer for Notebook Check noted, “leaving a sharper edge than usual.”
“When two of these thin, relatively sharp panels come so close to each other, they can cause problems for anything that gets in the way.”
What made the Cybertruck uniquely more dangerous is that, as reviewers have noted, the vehicle’s stylish steel body has no radius on the edges of the panels. Cybertruck body panels are made of 1.8mm thick stainless steel plates, which are not folded or hemmed at the edges
‘When this front trunk is open you get an essentially perfectly cut stainless steel sharp corner and then the trunk doesn’t have good pinch detection,’ TikTok user @molescool explained in his review of the new ‘carrot test’ video.
Musk handed over the first Cybertruck keys to owners on November 30 during a livestream event at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas.
The CEO seemed cheerful as he watched the steel-clad electric vehicles roll onto a stage before inviting everyone to sit in their new truck – despite an expletive-filled outburst aimed at advertisers who pulled out of X the day before.
Moments after the livestream ended, Tesla updated its website with new prices, showing that the price of the Cybertuck has almost doubled from $39,999 to $60,990.
The steel-clad vehicle features a 6-foot-long and 4-foot-wide bed that can carry up to 2,5,000 pounds, a towing capacity of 11,000 pounds and a ground clearance of 17 inches.
Musk said the Cybertruck’s body is made of a stainless steel alloy developed by Tesla.
Stainless steel, Musk said, has no corrosion and does not require paint, but can still be mass-produced.
The starting price wasn’t the only one that rose: all-wheel drive now costs $79,990, and the Cyberbeast costs $99,990.
DailyMail.com has reached out for comment to Tesla, which disbanded its US media relations team in October 2020.
This article will be updated if the company responds.