Tesla Cybertruck crumple zones rely on shattering gigacastings for occupant safety — repair cost implications could be dire

Tesla's reputation for vehicle safety thus far has been a bit of a mixed bag. While its EVs have all received stellar safety ratings across the board, a number of serious accidents have resulted in the safety of its driver assistance packages being called into question. The Cybertruck has a different problem — one which Tesla hopes to solve by destroying what could be one of the most expensive single components, excepting the battery pack, of the Cybertruck.

In a recent post to social media platform X (fka Twitter), @Cybertruck, the official Tesla Cybertruck account, posted a video of the electric pickup's crash testing alongside a quote explaining how the crumple zones in the Cybertruck work.

When in a high-speed collision, Cybertruck’s front underbody casting is designed to break into small pieces. This helps reduce occupant impact by absorbing & dispensing energy.

This is similar to how regular cars and other EVs dissipate energy during a crash, although an earlier crash test video shown by Tesla during the Cybertruck Delivery Event reveals that enough of the vehicle's energy was transferred to the rest of the pickup truck that the rear wheel somehow broke loose.

However, completely destroying the front underbody casting could be a costly affair, given just how expensive the component is. The whole point of the gigacasting is that it replaces a stack of welded and bolted-on components with a single cast component.

This manufacturing simplification is great for manufacturing costs and initial vehicle cost, but, as has been pointed out before, it could have implications on the cost of repair. While a mild fender bender in the Cybertruck may turn out to be rather inexpensive, any collision that transmits substantial amounts of energy to the front casting would likely damage the part catastrophically.

This is just the latest in the recent trend of expensive EV repairs. Before this, we had seen everything from Rivian customers charged over $30,000 to replace a body panel to Tesla customers quoted upwards of $20,000 to replace a battery pack that was eventually repaired by a third-party workshop for a fraction of that cost.

Buy a Cybertruck 1/24 die-cast metal toy car on Amazon or read about the Cybertruck's development in Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk.