Tesla's new Cybertruck EV was recently unveiled in Los Angeles
It is equipped with Tesla Armor Glass, says Tesla
The glass broke during a demo, leaving Musk to cover the situation up
Tesla product unveilings have always consisted of two distinct elements on stage: a fancy new EV (because that's what Tesla makes) and Elon Musk (the man who runs the company). A combination of these two elements has always resulted in a spectacular show of speed and force, leaving the audience visibly impressed. Musk, who is something of a showman at such events, probably did not think something could go wrong when there's glass-breaking involved. But at the unveiling of Tesla's latest Cybertruck EV, it did.
When Musk unveiled the new Tesla Cybertruck a couple of days ago in Los Angeles, California, he wanted to demonstrate how impregnable the EV's outer structure (or ‘exoskeleton’) was. So, he had Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen beat the Cybertruck's front door with a sledgehammer, only to show that nothing had happened to it after impact. But when he had his companion hurl a steel ball at the Cybertruck's windows from less than a metre, the glass in both windows positively cracked.
The Cybertruck's windows probably weren't supposed to crack during that demo, given that they're made of ‘Tesla Armor Glass’, which is an “ultra-strong glass” with a “polymer-layered composite” that can “absorb and redirect impact force for improved performance and damage tolerance.” In fact, Musk's onstage assistants successfully demonstrated the glass' strength a few minutes before the Cybertruck demo by dropping the same steel ball on it from an estimated height of about six feet. What's more, Musk later tweeted a video in which the Cybertruck's window goes through a successful ball-smash test.
From the video posted by The Verge, we can tell Musk himself looked quite surprised the windows on the Cybertruck cracked. But instead of dwelling on the faux pas, he decided to look at the bright side of the failed experiment by saying words like, “on the plus side, it didn't go through” and “room for improvement”. Is Tesla's new glass camera-shy? Or was the demo unit fitted with regular glass? The internet is suddenly buzzing with theories like this one on what happened there. Whichever be the case, we feel Musk did a good job of covering his shock up on stage, unlike the Cybertruck's smashed windows.
Cover image courtesy: The Verge/Tesla
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
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Vignesh Giridharan
Progressively identifies more with the term ‘legacy device’ as time marches on. View Full Profile
