Minutes into Tesla‘s huge reveal of the earth-shattering Cybertruck electric pickup truck, the truck itself shattered. Well, its windows sort of did. What happened? Tesla founder Elon Musk was in the middle of claiming that the Cybertruck will feature “armor glass” windows when he invited Tesla lead designer Franz von Holzhausen to throw a large metal ball at the driver’s side window of the prototype truck onstage. So von Holzhausen did as he was told, threw a major-league pitch and . . . smeared the window glass.
Musk, visibly surprised, beckoned von Holzhausen to heave the metal ball again, this time at the rear window, earnestly remarking that “it [the ball] didn’t go through!” (A reference the fact that, like conventional laminated glass used on windshields, the Tesla’s windows smeared and held their shape without exploding into a million pieces.) Clearly hoping for redemption, Musk looked on as the von Holzhausen threw the ball again and, again, smashed another window. Obviously, the windows weren’t supposed to react to the metal ball that way. Just before the stunt, other helpers onstage with Musk had repeatedly dropped the same metal ball on a piece of the “armored glass” from ever-greater heights. Each time, the ball bounced off the window, which is made from what we understand to be a Gorilla Glass-like material. And then there is the connotation of the word “armored,” which implies an impenetrability and, in this context, an imperviousness to metal balls.
The audience fell quiet—and, we assume, those watching at home on Tesla’s livestream did, too—and Musk repeated the refrain “it didn’t go through” before adding “room for improvement.”
A zoomed-in look at the smeared armored glass windows, with Musk in the foreground, taken from Tesla’s livestream of the event.
From there on out, the Tesla Cybertruck reveal seemed to dodder off-kilter. Musk’s delivery of the the truck’s other features slowed down, while the audience tried whooping and hollering and cheering, practically willing the performance back on track. The large screen looming over the stage began racing through presentation slides, and Musk and the event organizers clearly rushed through the rest of the talking points.
It’s almost too bad about the failed window stunt, because Tesla had several other jaw-dropping, swaggering stunts throughout the reveal that did succeed. The same Randy Johnson wannabe who overpowered the Cybertruck’s armored-glass windows, earlier in the reveal, repeatedly whacked the Cybertruck’s stainless steel body panels with a sledgehammer, causing no damage. Just before, he had done the same to what appeared to be a Ford F-150‘s aluminum-skinned door and destroyed it. On video, Tesla also showed the Cybertruck’s stainless steel skin being shot with a 9-mm handgun round, denting, but not yielding. There were far more wow-inducing moments during the Cybertruck reveal, but unfortunately they’re likely to be bashed by a single (well, two) tragic tosses of a metal ball.