As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have a use case for owning a Cybertruck (or any electric car or truck), but for a supposedly unpopular vehicle, I actually see a lot of them on the road. (Of course, I’m only a mile from a Tesla sales office, so your mileage may vary.) But one of the the Cybertruck’s selling features is that it’s bulletproof. Well, Brandon Herrera (who owns a Cybertruck) decided to see how bullet-proof, though he’s using a detached Cybertruck door rather than his own vehicle.
Spoilers: It seems pretty bulletproof to handgun ammo up the .45 ACP, but once he stepped up to the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle (“the Cybertruck’s only known natural predator”) and the bigger rifle rounds (including 5.5.6 NATO and even, for grins, a .50 BMG round out of his very own AK-50), it was bulletproof no more.
Bonus! Remember when WhistlinDieseltorture tested a Cybertruck?
Now there’s a Part 2:
Preppers will not doubt be aghast at Mr. Diesel’s profligate waste of rice in drying out a water-logged F-150 engine…
Tags: .22, .44 Magnum, .45 ACP, .50 BMG, AK-47, Brandon Herrera, Cybertruck, electric cars, Ford F-150, Guns, Pickup Truck, Tesla Motors, video, WhistlinDiesel
The Cybertruck exterior sheeting is 3mm thick AISI Type 301 stainless steel cold rolled to half hardness. AISI Type 301 is a lean nickel austenitic phase stainless which transforms to the martensite phase as it is cold deformed or penetrated by a projectile. Martensite phase is the hard form of steel in your better magnetic knives. This dynamic phase transformation is called “TRIP”, for Transformation Induced Plasticity” by metallurgists, and produces a significant magnetic response in transformed AISI Type 301 stainless steel.
At half hardness, it has just over a 100 ksi yield strength and a 150 ksi ultimate tensile strength. Projectile penetration challenges the Type 301 right up to its ultimate tensile strength. The TRIP transformation provides excellent penetration resistance without shattering, a continuing problem with high hardness (>500 BHN) conventional armor steels.
Type 301 is quite similar in its penetration resistance behavior to a number of proprietary automotive crash part steels. In my experience, five 4mm thick sheets of these TRIP steels, tightly bonded, will reliably stop .30-06 M2 AP, which is still used as the standard test round for projectile penetration resistance. Single 4 mm TRIP steel sheets make excellent spall liners for armored vehicles.
BATFE prohibits most private organizations from possessing 7.62x51mm AP rounds under a creative interpretation of the word “handgun” in LEOPA, so the .30-06 M2 AP soldiers on.
[…] How Bulletproof Is The Cybertruck? “Spoilers: It seems pretty bulletproof to handgun ammo up the .45 ACP, but once he stepped up […]
I remember the FBI ditched the .45 acp back in the Public Enemy era because it couldn’t penetrate car bodies (which were thicker than today’s MPG era)
Did he test the .38 Super, which was regarded as better?
During the LA fires when Cybertruck owners with Starlinks were being asked to drive around LA to help people connect, Musk was clear on X that
“Cybertruck side panels are bulletproof to subsonic projectiles (handguns, shotgun & Tommy gun), but the glass is not, so make sure to duck if you see anyone wielding a gun.
This is not fiction.”
Saw the post on January 12, 2025
I would LOVE to see Herrera do that exact same sequence (without having to use each of the calibers for every possibility, since some will fail early) with a “heavy duty” pickup door from today, and a sedan door from today. Then from the 80s. Then a set from the late 60s, maybe. And just find some old Studebaker(?) door from the late 40s to pop a couple of rounds into. Maybe a Leaf door with a battery behind it (from some used up EV) – boom?
It would be a great example of the “evolution of car material science” versus firearm rounds. Ooh, he could use “vintage” loadings, too, for a few of them (so no 9mm +P+, etc.).