A new report claiming Tesla’s Cybertruck is among the most dangerous cars in the world should be taken with a heavy grain of salt, but there are major safety concerns with Elon Musk’s electric ute, according to an Australian road safety expert.

The Cybertruck, a self-driving electric ute with a range of 400km and towing capacity of nearly 3,500kg, was launched by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in late 2019.

According to automotive industry analyst site FuelArc, there have been 14.5 deaths for every 100,000 Cybertrucks sold, compared to a ratio of about one for every 118,000 Ford Pinto, a vehicle from the 1970s which gained notoriety for a series of vehicle fires.

“The Cybertruck is 17 times more likely to have a fire fatality than a Ford Pinto,” the report claimed.

The data relied upon for the report stated there were 34,438 Cybertrucks sold in Northern America as of the start of 2025 and five reported fire fatalities involving this vehicle.

Monash University Accident Research Centre director Professor Stuart Newstead said this is far too small of a sample size to make any genuine comparison.

“With only five fires reported in Cybertrucks, I am not sure the comparison would have statistical validity at this stage, as the estimated fire risk rates would have very large confidence intervals,” Newstead told Information Age.

The report extrapolates this data to come to a fatality rate of 14.52 per 100,000 units.

It compares this to the Ford Pinto, with 3.173 million sales from 1971 to 1980, and 27 fire fatalities, equating to a rate of 0.85 deaths per 100,000 vehicles.

The Pinto was designed with the fuel tank placed outside the rear bumper structure, leaving it vulnerable to being punctured in the event of a collision.

“The Cybertruck is far more dangerous than the historic poster child for corporate greed and grossly antagonistic design,” the report said.

EV fires

One of the fatalities included in the report is the explosion of a Cybertruck outside a Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, with authorities saying the driver had taken his own life.

The writers of the report admit that including this case was “controversial” but that the Cybertruck’s rate would still be higher without its inclusion.

There are two other crashes it is based on: a crash in Piedmont, California where three people were killed and a crash in Baytown, Texas, where one person died.

But according to the Queensland Treasury, electric vehicles are far less likely to catch fire than petrol vehicles.

“The problem is the effort required to extinguish an electric vehicle fire should it take hold,” Newstead said.

“This is a particular concern if the vehicle is in a confined or high-risk space such as a residential building underground car park.”

Real safety concerns surrounding the Cybertruck

Despite the flaws when it comes to this latest research, there are numerous safety concerns surrounding Tesla’s Cybertruck, Newstead said.

“The primary concern with the Cybertruck is the risk it poses to other road users in a crash, particularly to other vehicle drivers given its very high mass, and to all other road users given its high, angular body structures,” he said.

“Crash test programs or real-world assessment of the Cybertruck safety are currently very limited, particularly around its impact on other road users.

“Indications are, it is likely to be poor, but the evidence needs to be collected.

“Hopefully its crash avoidance performance is excellent to avoid some of these issues but again, real world validation is required.”

Just this week a Cybertruck owner posted on X that his vehicle, while in self-driving mode, “failed to merge out of a lane that was ending…and made no attempt to slow down or turn” before it mounted a kerb and hit a lamppost.

Despite the car appearing to plow itself into the lamppost, the driver posted his gratitude to Tesla.

“Thank you Tesla for engineering the best passive safety in the world,” he said on X.

“I walked away without a scratch.”

According to Wired’s analysis, the number of recalls for Cybertrucks last year made it worse than 91 per cent of all vehicles last year.

The Cybertruck is currently only available in North America, and it’s unlikely to be on sale in Australia anytime soon, if at all.