Everything
It was the moment that sparked a mass of memes and unwanted press. This week, Elon Musk unveiled the long-awaited Tesla Cybertruck dressed in a futuristic exterior and supposedly bullet-proof windows. During the event, the lead designer of Tesla, Franz von Holzhausen, was invited to throw a metal ball at the window to illustrate its strength. And well, everyone knows what happened next.
Instead of miraculously bouncing off the glass, it shattered and the ball simply rolled away. For Tesla, it was far from ideal and pretty embarrassing whether it was a PR stunt or not. But taking to Twitter to do damage control – both literally and figuratively – Musk has explained why it happened, despite testing beforehand.
Yup. Sledgehammer impact on door cracked base of glass, which is why steel ball didn’t bounce off. Should have done steel ball on window, *then* sledgehammer the door. Next time …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2019
According to the entrepreneur, the base of the glass was cracked beforehand by a previous demonstration when von Holzhausen swung a sledgehammer at the Cybertruck’s body. This was believed to have diminish the structural integrity of the window, allowing the window to smash. To prove it had in fact worked in the past, Musk also posted a video of testing before the event, shortly after the blunder – just to further instil customer satisfaction.
Franz throws steel ball at Cybertruck window right before launch. Guess we have some improvements to make before production haha. pic.twitter.com/eB0o4tlPoz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2019
