• partial_accumen
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    323 days ago

    The vehicle was rented through the car rental company Turo

    The truck used in New Orleans earlier today was also rented through Turo. Is this a coincidence?

    • @[email protected]
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      313 days ago

      In my area, Turo is the lowest cost for car rentals, and they just act as a middleman between someone with a car and someone without one. They may have some vehicles of their own, but most of their fleet are not cars they own. It could just be people were going for the lowest cost form for their killing & destruction.

      I’ve rented through Turo and they just have you take a photo of your drivers license, front/back. No one confirmed it when picking up the car. It could be that their prescreening is flawed and fake IDs were not being detected? I’d have to imagine this violated state laws, so if they were found to not be validating the information, they are probably in some shit.

      • @[email protected]
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        113 days ago

        Presumably even if those IDs were checked, I doubt both those people have priors. This sort of terrorism is different from other crimes in that they don’t start with ‘small time’ terrorism.

        • @[email protected]
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          33 days ago

          Right, if it was a failure to catch fake IDs, my guess is the fake id would be to evade getting caught after the fact, regardless if they had any history on their record. I haven’t looked into anything really for both cases but I’d imagine the people at Turo are scrambling double time now.

          • @[email protected]
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            3 days ago

            Yeah, a lot of the justice/surveillance system is set up under the premise that you need to catch a criminal after the crime, so when a car is involved in a crime, you go to the rental company and grab the driver’s licence. If dying or getting caught is part of your plan, none of these things are actually a deterrent.

  • edric
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    203 days ago

    “The fact that this was a Cybertruck really limited the damage that occurred inside of the valet, because it had most of the blast go up through the truck and out,”

    Does anyone why that was the case and if it’s true vs a regular ICE car?

    • @RapidcreekOP
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      463 days ago

      Not sure about this new marketing campaign “Cybertruck: The worst possible choice for a car bomb”

      • @meco03211
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        83 days ago

        There was a car commercial from Germany I think like that. It had a terrorist try to car bomb some place. They flip the switch and the entire explosion is contained in the car. It was about how good German made quality was.

      • @pivot_root
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        3 days ago

        You’re just not thinking of the bigger picture:

        Cybertruck: The worst possible choice for a car bomb. Prove that you’re a true American patriot and not a terrorist for as little as $100.000.

      • FaceDeer
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        33 days ago

        We’re going to go from mocking cybertrucks for exploding to mocking them for not being good at exploding?

      • Flying Squid
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        13 days ago

        I guess it is apocalypse-proof.

        If you want to use it to cause an apocalypse.

    • FuglyDuck
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      3 days ago

      likely because it was in the truck bed.

      The walls would have directed any explosion upwards rather than outwards. Further, Fuel-air bombs tend not to be very destructive unless there’s the correct mixture of fuel-to-air; in a confined space. (like, for example, Trump Tower Lobby.)

      Either this person is a complete and total moron, or he didn’t mean to cause a lot of damage, (or it was a total accident. Who knows. maybe he was planning a rave out in the desert and a spark triggered the gas.) I say that because there doesn’t seem to be anything that would have stopped them from ramming the doors.

      it should be noted, that Tesla/Musk probably wants to spin this as terrorism for a lot of reasons. Including being that if it wasn’t an intentional act; then it’s definitely going to paint CT drivers as complete and utter morons who store fuel and fireworks in the back of a truck. (and yes, static electricity can set off a fuel-air mixture, including static electricity built up in plastic bed liners. Or a sparking motor to open the bed…)

      • Monkey With A Shell
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        53 days ago

        Given that it was the most readily identifiable Tesla vehicle parked outside of a Trump hotel, it doesn’t take much to see some symbolism all over it. That they used a bunch of gasoline rather than something like fertilizer/anfo, and just parking it outside rather than in the lobby, would make it out to be more about messaging than destruction.

        • FuglyDuck
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          13 days ago

          Sure. If it was intentional.

          • Monkey With A Shell
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            12 days ago

            I’d suspect it was, but by who is another matter. It wouldn’t be shocking if some maga folks where trying to create a false flag event to blame ‘the enemy within’ and use it to spin up some measures to go after others.

      • @[email protected]
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        83 days ago

        I could swear there was a video out there about these things having live electricity on random bits of metal (shit quality control/design) on the body

        • FuglyDuck
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          83 days ago

          there was a recall on the inverter for the AC drive motors, and all sorts of other electrical issues.

          so. yeah. I’d believe it.

          • Tiefling IRL
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            53 days ago

            The thing has had over a half dozen recalls in the last year. It’s literally the least safe car on the road.

            • FuglyDuck
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              63 days ago

              Oh yeah.

              There’s a reason that Musk doesn’t want to provide accident reports to the NHTSA.

        • @[email protected]
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          33 days ago

          The chassis of the car is used for ground. Your car would melt and catch fire as soon as they get electrified.

          • FuglyDuck
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            43 days ago

            Depends on the system involved. the main AC motors, absolutely. the motors for the bed cover or wipers? unlikely.

            there do seem to be a lot of reports with electrical systems being faulty- motors, the dc inverter for the main drive was recalled… lots of problems with “sudden loss of power” warnings…

      • @[email protected]
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        53 days ago

        Either this person is a complete and total moron

        gotta be this one. why do you need gasoline in electric car

        also notice how musk hypes up surveillance capabilities of this rolling 1984 and how it “helped” while not mentioning how doors locked after explosion

        McMahill said officials were able to track the route the Tesla took to Las Vegas with the help of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who provided video of the Cybertruck at Tesla charging stations and by having the truck unlocked after it auto-locked in the explosion.

        https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tesla-cybertruck-appears-burst-flames-trump-hotel-las-vegas-rcna185932

        • FuglyDuck
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          63 days ago

          I knew the doors were locked.

          Didn’t know they donated the geolocation data.

          There’s reasons I won’t ever drive a Tesla.

        • Flying Squid
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          3 days ago

          gotta be this one. why do you need gasoline in electric car

          Theoretically (not saying this is the case here) you have a gas-powered generator for wherever you’re going.

          Edit: I wonder if it would be feasible to put a gas generator in the bed of a Cybertruck to keep it constantly charged for a long trip. Obviously, it goes against the whole idea of an electric car, but I’m curious.

      • edric
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        33 days ago

        Gotcha, so it’s because it was a vehicle with an open bed and not an enclosed roof like an SUV, and not necessarily because it was specifically a cybertruck. I was trying to discern if the guy who said it was trying to imply that it being a cybertruck specifically limited the damage.

        • FuglyDuck
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          23 days ago

          Well. It’s the sheriff, so he could have been saying it that way to suggest CTs are safe (they’re not, but that’s a different matter,) or he was speaking generally, but, eh. Nothing about it being a CT, specifically, would help any more than any other pickup truck. (and as an EV, the lithium batteries are far more problematic than an ICE vehicle during a fire.)

          Given that it was the sheriff and they apparently had help from Tesla to get into it (and probably get the telemetry from before,) and they/Musk might have leaned on him to make sure people knew it was the truck’s fault.

          The bit about Musk insisting the telemetry was all “positive”… if the dude was planing a keggar out in the desert, and the bomb was set off by a short in the bed cover system… (or just random static electricity build up, that happens too,) it would never show up in the telemetry.

          either way, it’s probably reasonable to assume anything said by Musk is pure 100% grade-a marketing spin.

        • @NotMyOldRedditName
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          3 days ago

          its because the sides were stainless steel. The explosion was contained by them. Had it been sheet metal it would have blasted out the sides as well. The bed was closed at the time as well and can support an adult jumping on it, but up was still the path of least resistance because of the sides.

          You can see the videos the sheriff plays in his press conference, the sides were intact after the explosion.

          Edit: So yes, it is very likely that the Cybertruck specifically did limit damage.

          Edit: It was also enough force to knock open the closed tail gate.

          Edit: You can also see in this picture how it deformed the outer steel on the right. This stuff is 9mm bulltet proof, it takes a lot of energy to deform it. That’s where it would have come out if it was just sheet metal. If it had created an opening it would have let even more out in that direction which would have caused even more damage in that direction, which would have made the opening bigger, letting more out etc.

    • @[email protected]
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      3 days ago

      I’d guess it’s because of the shape of the car structure. In a pickup bed the blast goes up. But if it was in a car or suv all the energy would go horizontally out the windows since there’s a roof stopping it from going up.

  • @andrewta
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    143 days ago

    If ya really dislike your truck you can always sell it. No need for such extremes.

      • @andrewta
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        133 days ago

        Hope he got the insurance package

        • @DocMcStuffin
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          83 days ago

          It doesn’t matter because it’s not his problem anymore.