I mentioned before (I thought in this thread actually but guess not) that I was once in a rollover accident where the car made a couple of tumbles and ended upside down. I was suspended upside down and, between the tension on the belt and my addled state of mind after my impromptu carnival ride, I couldn’t get the belt to unlatch. Some people stopped to help but the doors were jammed from the rolling. A guy used one of the glass breaker tools to bust out one of the front windows and then cut my seat belt so I could get out of the vehicle.
Granted, the vehicle didn’t burst into flames ten seconds later or anything so I probably could have just hung there unhappily until the fire department showed up. It still feels like laminated glass would have kind of sucked for me there but I’m also willing to accept that my situation may have been an outlier on the “bad effects from side windows” scale versus insisting now that lamination is the devil’s work.
Lamination isn’t a panacea. When I rolled my truck as a kid, the laminated windshield was gone instantly. It was all in one piece, but it was no longer attached to the truck. When it was over and the truck was on its side, I just walked out of the truck where the windshield used to be after I unlatched my seat belt.
The tempered back window was still in place and in one piece when I drove the truck home and was still there when my dad sold it to the junk yard the next day. The roof hadn’t been crushed down to the edges of its frame, so it was fine.
Really, lamination is to prevent penetration and not much else. I’ve seen that in action when I hit a sawhorse barrier in heavy fog. I saw its middle section go up and disappear into the fog, then come right back down on my windshield which thankfully stopped it. If it had been just tempered glass, it probably would have been in my lap. When I replaced the windshield, I kicked it out pretty easily without too much fussing with cutting the seal. I would be very surprised if one held someone in the car in a severe crash.
So, don’t Google “ejected through windshield” unless you want to see some nasty pictures. Wear your seat belts, folks. Mine’s been saved by an old style lap belt.
This thread seems to have traveled well beyond considerations of the zeitgeist of this design, but on the rare occasions I see one in traffic, I am forcibly reminded of how large they are compared to most cars, and how aggressive their appearance when moving (much more, it seems to me, than when stationary). I still ponder the sort of person who would want to put across that image for themselves in their vehicle. I remember when we used to laugh at Hummers, for a variety of reasons, but they mostly looked silly. These look sinister to me. Just my subject two bits’ worth.
CTs are just about exactly the same size as a typical pickup truck. Many of which also have deliberately bullying styling.
But yeah, we’re in an era where toxic levels of selfishness and bullying are considered virtues by many. The ignorant abusive “Alpha male” is the poster child of today.
My kids just laugh at the CT whenever they see it (and that doesn’t come from me. I remain silent on the matter). I don’t think it looks particularly bullying (looks more silly sci-fi), and I don’t understand all the comments about it being big, because it looks significantly smaller than the pickups I regularly see driving around Chicago. The first time I saw a CT I was like: that’s it? It was much bigger in my head.
The Tesla dealership by my house has gone from around eight of them on the lot to only two in the last three or so months. I don’t know who the hell is still buying those things. Maybe they hid them in the back or the inventory has shifted.
I also thought it was going to be bigger based on pictures. Something like a Hummer. When all is said and done it doesn’t do anything particular well as a truck. I still haven’t warmed up to the style. The only thing I like is the rolltop truck bed cover. A clever idea.
I’d rather have a Model S Plaid. 4 doors, quiet and enough power to pull onto the highway.
I agree with most of that, except I don’t think the styling of most pickups is particularly aggressive or bullying; what is aggressive about them – and why they’re beloved by rednecks and MAGAts – is their sheer size. The hood of a Ford F-150 is roughly about as high as the roof of my car. When I’m backing out of a parking spot and there’s a full-size pickup next to me, visibility in that direction is about the same as if I had the Great Wall of China beside me.
The CT is much the same except also aggressively ugly and badly built. I cannot even begin to imagine the mental processes of someone who would want to own one.
Continuing the size comparison discussion with @Roderick_Femm and @wolfpup, here is the 4-door CyberTruck compared with Dodge’s and Ford’s 4-door baseline pickups …
That website is real handy, but doesn’t have the latest models of most US cars. As such both the Dodge Ram and Ford F-150 comparators are the previous body style from ~5 years ago. If anything, the current ones are even larger / taller.
Punchline being: the Tesla isn’t bigger than the others. It is more slab-sided and slab-fronted. And, being unusual, tends to trigger really looking at it rather than “Ho hum, another pickup truck.”
In my neighborhood CTs are common enough they’re unremarkable. In my building there is one CT and one F-150 Lightning EV. They’re often parked a space or two apart at my building’s charger bank. The F-150 is definitely the taller and more imposing of the two. Both as to grill height and as to cab height.
OTOH, if you mentally slot the CT into “oddly styled sedan”, not “oddly styled pick-up”, then yes, it is an absolutely hulking sedan. Heftier even than a Rolls Royce.
It’s fine as a special product but not when it’s only one of five that your company sells. And the others are two sedans and two crossovers, so you’re not giving many options.
The real problem with the CTs slow sales is they’ve already grossly over-produced them and over-built the production capacity for them.
I haven’t seen recent numbers on how many unsold units are piling up, but tens of thousands is in the ballpark. Absent some amazing fleet deal, those are nearly all destined to be scrapped unsold. And more are still coming off the assembly line.
I will note that having just switched from driving a medium SUV (2007 Toyota Rav4 6cyl) to a small/compact 4 door sedan (2025 Prius PHEV) I do notice just how large all the SUV/Crossovers/Pickups are and have a reflexive “I’m not safe” flinch. Though the Prius is very highly rated on crash safety.
But I suspect that’s part of the seemingly ever growing, ever more massive trends in American vehicles. Someone out there is bigger than you, so you upsize, and then so does everyone else, and then someone across town goes even Bigger.
Giving the customers what they think they want/need doesn’t work out the way we think it should quite often.
Or (back to the CT) Musk finding it amazing doesn’t seem to work past an (honestly surprising IMHO) a number of huge Musk fans who have the wherewithal to buy such an expensive beast. Especially since Elon has been on FSD of Evil for the last few years (before that, he had “assistive” evil only).
I went from an Acura EL several years ago to a Honda CRV, for safety reasons. Not because of worries about the size of other vehicles, but for driving in winter snow storms on the highway.
My Acura was so low down that if I got passed by another vehicle, it often kicked up enough snow that I was temporarily blinded.
The Honda is up high enough that I don’t get snow-blinded by passing vehicles.