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During the 2019 unveiling of the Tesla Cybertruck, the company’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, threw steel balls at the truck to prove its sturdiness, but it broke two windows. In an interview, von Holzhausen said the crash became “a big marketing moment.” Tesla began selling T-shirts alluding to the crash, and CEO Elon Musk claimed the company received 200,000 orders for Cybertrucks in the days following its launch.
Some might call Franz von Holzhausen’s accidental destruction of a Tesla Cybertruck window a blunder; von Holzhausen would prefer to call it a “great meme.”
During the 2019 unveiling of the Tesla Cybertruck, von Holzhausen, the company’s chief designer, threw steel balls into the vehicle, intending to prove that the windows CEO Elon Musk said were made of “armored glass” were indeed very tough. The windows, however, unexpectedly shattered, leaving Musk to deliver the rest of his presentation about the new truck while standing in front of the damaged car. Tesla shares fell more than 5% the next day.
While the incident seemed like an omen, indicating that the Cybertruck was about to fail, the botched demo actually opened up an opportunity to give the new model the spotlight, von Holzhausen said in an interview with Tesla Club Austria published earlier this year.
“It was just one of those Murphy’s Law things where something bad happens, but it turned out to be a great meme,” von Holzhausen said, referring to the phenomenon of when something can go wrong, it usually does. “And I think in a weird way — we’re not marketing — but it turned into a great marketing moment.”
He added: “It wasn’t an expected moment, but at that moment, you have to come back with it.”
Following the vehicle’s unveiling, Musk posted a video on X of von Holzhausen throwing a steel ball at the Cybertruck model before launch, its windows withstanding the force of the throw with no visible damage. The video has been viewed more than 6 million times within three days of its posting.
“I guess we have some improvements to make before production haha,” Musk wrote.
Days later, Musk praised the success of the Cybertruck launch, saying Tesla had received more than 200,000 orders for the vehicle. While Tesla doesn’t disclose Cybertruck numbers when it reports earnings, bundling them with the Model S and X, the company recalled nearly all Cybertrucks it had on the road earlier this year due to a problem where an exterior panel could detach, and that numbered only about 46,000 vehicles.