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this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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Technology
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I'm guessing they are talking about accidentally hitting someone with the car. At lower speeds, collisions shouldn't be lethal at least with a regular car (there are a lot of other factors too, but anyway). I can imagine that if you hit a thick steel panel it's going to cause you more damage than the regular aluminum car.
It genuinely scares me that they are so confident in them being right that they didn't stop for one second to try and understand what the sentence actually means.
This will happen with any car. Mass x velocity wins every time. A car would need a giant balloon around it to transfer energy into the pedestrian slowly enough to not injure them significantly.
And what "regular aluminum car"? Cars aren't, by and large, aluminum. They're still mostly steel. Not that it matters, aluminum body panels are less flexible than equivalent steel panels. The places where aluminum is heavily used are things like engines, suspension components, substructures, etc. There are very few cars using aluminum extensively in the body. Ford pickups use it in the bed, Jeeps use it for the engine hood. There are others, but making aluminum body parts is more complex than steel that's easily stamped, and assembly is different.
You're probably right, I'm no car connoisseur.
Still, reading the article it seems like the cybertruck is using thicker panels for it's body.
And yes, I very much agree that mass x velocity always wins, but in urban areas where there are accidental hits in crossroads at very low speeds that are, normally, not lethal, a harder material can cause worse injuries. And I think those are the situations that the article was referring to.