A man who became the first person in the world allowed to drive using a mind-controlled bionic arm is in a critical condition after the car he was driving crashed into a tree in Austria.

Christian Kandlbauer, 22, lost his arms after an electric shock sustained while climbing a 20,000-volt power line in 2005. Austrian and American scientists teamed up to create a prosthesis he could operate using his mind and which was also capable of feeling. After intensive training, he eventually passed his driving test.

Tonight Kandlbauer is in hospital with serious head injuries after driving his specially modified car into a tree in his native Styria, south-east Austria.

A spokesperson for LKH hospital in Graz said Kandlbauer was in intensive care fighting for his life.

Kandlbauer's Subaru caught fire after he came off the road and crashed into the tree on a main road near Bad Waltersdorf, 40 miles east of Graz, in the early hours of Tuesday. A quick-thinking truck driver saved his life by extinguishing the blaze and dragging him out of the vehicle.

It is not yet known if the bionic arm had anything to do with the accident. When firefighters arrived at the scene they found the man's non-bionic, right-arm prosthesis two metres away from the wreckage. According to the volunteer fire service in Bad Waltersdorf, it had been ripped from his body by the force of the crash.

Paramedics then removed Kandlbauer's bionic left arm to administer first aid. Workers at Otto Bock, the Viennese firm that made Kandlbauer's bionic limb, were in shock at the news of their most famous customer. "He isn't just one of our prosthetic users, but a friend for many of us. We are all thinking about him and hoping that he gets better soon," a spokesman told the Austrian paper the Kurier.

Earlier this year, Dr Hubert Egger, head of the research team that developed Kandlbauer's arm, said Kandlbauer was a pioneer. "Christian is the first patient in Europe where this surgery was done, and the first person in Europe with this mind-controlled prosthetic. In the future we hope to fit patients in the UK with prosthetics like this," he said.

The arm was developed using a new technique known as targeted muscle reinnervation, in which nerves that once controlled a lost limb are used to control a prosthesis. Kandlbauer was the guinea pig for the four-year research project.

Surgeons at Vienna general hospital transplanted the nerves that had previously controlled his healthy limb to the chest muscles in a six-hour operation.

The transplanted nerves allow electrical impulses from the brain to reach the muscles in the chest. The muscles act like a booster, amplifying the signal to a level that can be picked up by electrodes on the surface of the chest. These signals are interpreted by a microcomputer, and used to control a prosthesis which responds in real time to thoughts from his brain. "I feel very happy," Kandlbauer said this year. "It is like my earlier arm – I feel that my arm is a part of my body."

Following the operation, Kandlbauer returned to work as a warehouse clerk at the garage that once employed him as a mechanic. "With the prosthesis I am able to do things in my daily life alone without the help of another person," he said. "I am independent."

• This article was amended on 22 October 2010. The original described a non-fatal electric shock as electrocution. This has been corrected.