Exclusive: “There’s my challenge to Elon,” attorney S. Scott West told The Independent. “Make these vehicles so safe that I don’t have to do this anymore.”

Exclusive: “There’s my challenge to Elon,” attorney S. Scott West told The Independent. “Make these vehicles so safe that I don’t have to do this anymore.”

A Tesla Cybertruck owner in Texas was unable to escape after rolling it into a ditch last year, experiencing an unthinkable demise as the batteries powering the $100,000 stainless steel SUV burst into flames with such intensity the helpless driver’s skeletal system literally disintegrated, his family says.

Michael Sheehan, 47, “burned to death at 5,000°F – a fire so hot his bones experienced thermal fracture,” according to a gut-wrenching lawsuit his widow and parents have now filed against the electric auto manufacturer headed up by billionaire Elon Musk.

“He was eight inches shorter in length than he was before he burned,” attorney S. Scott West told The Independent. “That’s thermal fracture.”

  • floofloof@lemmy.ca
    108·
    1 day ago

    Sheehan was driving home when the Cybertruck “left the road” and struck a large concrete culvert, after which the vehicle’s “hyper volatile” battery system went into “thermal runaway” – a chain reaction of short-circuits ultimately resulting in uncontrollable temperature escalation – and caught fire.

    Once power was lost, it was impossible for Sheehan to open the Cybertruck’s electrically operated doors in the normal way, the complaint goes on, highlighting a major issue that has similarly doomed others riding in Teslas. The external door handles also failed to work, and the emergency manual door release handles within the Cybertruck are “unreasonably difficult to locate in an emergency,” the complaint states.

    These design problems are so glaringly obvious that the fact Tesla hasn’t bothered to fix them gives big “fuck you” vibes. A company’s culture comes from the top.