Tesla truck demo goes awry as shatterproof windows break
Tesla suffers broken glass mishap during chaotic launch of electric pickup truck
Elon Musk unveiled Tesla Inc.'s eagerly awaited electric pickup truck on Thursday but it didn't go as planned, ending with two smashed windows and the hashtag #cybertruck trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.
In the demo, Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen initially took a sledgehammer to the truck, which withstood the impact. Then it all went wrong.
Von Holzhausen took a metallic ball in his right hand, wound up and tossed it at the truck - smashing the front driver-side window, stunning the audience and viewers live streaming the event.
"Oh my f--ing god," Musk said, when the window broke.
"Maybe that was a little too hard," Musk said after the ball cracked the glass. So they tried again. A second test broke a second window.
"It's classic Tesla. It's poetic," said analyst Gene Munster of Loup Ventures. "I applaud the company for taking risks: this was not a boring presentation. The broken glass was unpredictable. This wasn't practiced."
The event was shown on YouTube, with the video made private shortly after. The heavy-duty truck retails from $39,900 and will come in three different variants.
"This obviously wasn't a true production vehicle so Tesla gets a pass for now," said Akshay Anand, executive analyst at Kelley Blue Book. "But if they are going to market the glass as a differentiator, they better be able to show stronger tests leading up to launch."