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Elon Musk’s Cybertruck Unveiling Didn’t Go Exactly as Planned

And people had jokes.

November 22, 2019

FREDERIC J. BROWN

Elon Musk’s latest Tesla unveiling didn’t go exactly as planned. The eccentric tech mogul unveiled his electric car company’s hotly anticipated Cybertruck on Thursday at the Tesla plant in Fremont, California. The steel truck’s slick, angular exterior looks like it was pulled from your favorite sci-fi movie, and is impressive enough.

But when it came time to demonstrate its supposedly bulletproof windows, well, that’s when things went off the rails. After successfully demonstrating the rest of the exterior’s durability, Musk called on a random audience member to throw a rock at the vehicle’s windows.

You can probably guess what happened next.

“Oh my fcking God,” Musk said as the window shattered, [per the New York Times*](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/business/tesla-cybertruck-pickup-truck.html). “Well, maybe that was a little too hard.” Unfortunately for Musk, the second attempt didn’t go much better, as the window shattered yet again. “It didn’t go through,” a visibly embarrassed Musk said.

Musk’s bizarre antics over the years, including his attention-seeking relationship with Grimes, has earned him his fair share of detractors over the years. Thursday’s gaffe was the perfect bit of Schadenfreude for all of those haters, which was evidenced by the reaction online.

Still, Thursday’s unveiling generated a ton of press, and Musk might ultimately achieve his stated goal of revolutionizing trucks as we know them. We’ll find out if all that publicity turns into sales when Tesla starts manufacturing the Cybertruck in late 2021. Musk for one, is confident.

“When we unveil this thing, there will be some people who are like, ‘Oh, that doesn’t look like a truck; I don’t want to buy it,’” he said. “It’s like when they came out with automobiles, people were like, ‘Oh, I like a horse and carriage.’ Sure, O.K., you can stick with your horse and carriage, but you’re going to get an automobile later. You just don’t know it.”