Tesla is conducting testing on its upcoming Cybertruck, and a video was posted today showing the aftermath of of a “ditch rollover” crash test, including a look at the rear seat and included 8-inch screen, like on the Model S/X and refreshed Model 3.
We’re getting more and more Cybertruck news and sightings lately with the Cybertruck release imminent. We’ve seen a “Release Candidate” supercharging, seen the frunk open with liner installed, and seen under the hood, including a look at the interior.
We haven’t seen much of the rear seat, yet, though, and today we got a video that includes a quick and clear look at the rear seat – but with a little extra debris strewn around.
This is because this video is of a “ditch rollover” tested Cybertruck – after it went through the test. Ditch rollover testing is meant to simulate what would happen to a car if it veered off the road into a ditch, causing the vehicle to roll over.
We don’t have actual results of the testing, or of the crash test dummies inside, merely a look at the aftermath of the vehicle after it was put onto the truck to head back home.
The video was posted to TikTok by @ctllogisticsinc, an account with only 2 videos and 6 followers, seemingly owned by Chicago-based trucking company CTL Logistics. It seems it was the company responsible for moving the Cybertruck after the test. The video was then deleted, but has been archived in a thread on cybertruckownersclub forum.
We can see two Cybertrucks in the video, with one covered and the other visible, clearly having been through a big crash. The video goes on to show the inside of the Cybertruck’s “vault” (trunk/bed) and the rear seat, including plenty of assorted debris.
The truck is missing its two rear “bulletproof” windows, though the front windows and windshield are relatively intact. The roof bow, the “peak” of the Cybertruck’s triangular roof, is bent inward. And metal body panels along the side roof rail are bent up.
That last bit might raise some eyebrows from those who have followed Cybertruck since the beginning. The Tesla Cybertruck has been marketed as having an “exoskeleton” construction which will help reduce manufacturing costs because the vehicle body panels would also be vehicle structural pieces. This was one key point of why the Cybertruck looks so weird.
But more recently we’ve seen pictures of the Cybertruck being built and it looks like it has a traditional unibody frame, with body panels on top – those panels are just flat, rather than curved like on most other vehicles.
This video seems to add evidence to that view, since the crashed and bent body panels kind of look like they’re hanging off the actual vehicle frame underneath – more like traditional auto construction, and not actually a breakthrough in exoskeleton manufacturing as Tesla originally suggested. Though this is a bit of an arcane conversation regardless.
But the panels are still mostly straight, not nearly as deformed as most vehicle body panels would be after a crash. This is probably owing to Tesla’s use of much thicker “ultra hard” stainless steel body panels, compared to the much thinner steel or aluminum panels other vehicles use (though it should be noted that vehicles are supposed to deform in a crash, because vehicle deformation dissipates crash energy that would otherwise be transferred into the bodies of the occupants).
Moving on, we can see inside the “vault,” with a bunch of debris inside it. One large piece is the trim from the exterior wheel arch, which is missing from the vehicle exterior, so we can imagine that other pieces in the truck bed might have come from other parts of the vehicle as well. Oddly, the interior of the vault looks pretty smashed up, with the truck bed having dents in it – perhaps this happened due to overall deformation of the vehicle body/frame in the crash?
Then the video shows the rear seat, and in that we see something new: two hexagonal “cyber cupholders” (perhaps not the most stable for holding circular shapes… maybe Tesla will release a “Cyber water bottle” along with its recently-released Cyber spoon) and the pièce de résistance, an 8-inch rear screen, much like the Model S, X and now the refreshed Model 3 have.
This is the first full look we’ve seen at the rear seat in light – we’ve been inside it at the Cybertruck introductory event, but that was an early version (and all we can note is that it was comfortable and cavernous on our short ride). A blurry video circulated recently, but it was taken from the perspective of someone sitting in the seat, so we haven’t seen the actual seat yet until now.
What do you think of the video of this crashed Cybertruck? Notice anything we didn’t? Want to exercise your typing fingers arguing about the definition of “exoskeleton?” Let us know in the comments.