Elon Musk left embarrassed after bulletproof Tesla cracks
Elon Musk was left embarrassed while demonstrating Tesla’s first “bulletproof” truck after a metal ball smashed the glass. SEE THE VIDEO HERE
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Elon Musk was left dumbfounded after a botched test of Tesla’s first “bulletproof” electric pick-up truck left its windows smashed up.
The red-faced Tesla CEO tried to show off the durability of the Cybertruck’s “armour glass” windows by having chief designer Franz von Holzhausen throw a metal ball at them.
The New York Post reports that the glass cracked, drawing groans from the crowd gathered in Los Angeles for the Blade Runner-inspired vehicle’s unveiling.
“Oh my f**king God,” Musk muttered onstage. “Well, maybe that was a little too hard.”
The flap came minutes after Musk claimed the Cybertruck’s hard-edge body is “literally bulletproof” to a 9mm handgun.
“We threw wrenches, we threw everything — we even literally threw the kitchen sink at the glass and it didn’t break,” Mr Musk said. “For a little weird reason, it broke now. I don’t know why.”
Mr Musk took the mishap in stride, noting that the ball didn’t go through the window.
“Room for improvement,” he quipped.
A panel of the window glass survived another onstage test in which a metal ball was dropped on it from above.
The futuristic truck is made from the same “ultra-hard” stainless steel alloy that will be used in the SpaceX Starship rocket, Mr Musk said. While he didn’t shoot the truck onstage, Mr Musk did have Mr von Holzhausen smack it with a sledgehammer.
“When you say something’s built tough, that’s what we mean,” Mr Musk said in a subtle dig at Ford, a major player in the pick-up truck market.
The materials aren’t all that’s unconventional about the Cybertruck.
It has an angular design that Mr Musk said was influenced by the 1977 James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me, as well as Blade Runner.
The Tesla co-founder claimed on Twitter that it will be the “official truck of Mars.”
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Tesla will offer three Cybertruck models starting at $US39,900 ($A57,000)with production expected to start in late 2021.
The $US69,900 ($A102,000) high-end model of the truck will come with a battery range of more than 800 kilometres and more than 6350kgs of towing capacity, according to Tesla.
This article originally appeared in the New York Post and is republished here with permission