Avoid falling on your face during a new product demonstration

On Thursday November 22, 2019 Elon Musk unveiled Tesla’s innovative new electric pickup – the Cybertruck.

A 14-minute video of the demonstration shows clips with the Cybertruck winning a tug of war against a Ford F-150 (9:00), and outrunning a Porsche 911 (9:35). But that’s not what many media reports led with.

Metaphorically he fell right on his face. Elon told his chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, to throw a metal ball at the driver’s window (7:35). When he did, large circle of glass broke. Then Franz repeated the throw and also broke the passenger window (7:55). Mr. Musk should have followed the Law of Holes: 

“If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging”

So, an article that day in the Daily Beast by Anna Kaplan is titled Tesla Cybertruck windows shatter during Elon Musk’s durability demo. Another article in Forbes by John Koetsier is titled Tesla demo fail: ‘transparent metal’ armored glass smashed during Cybertruck reveal.

Earlier, at 6:15 in the video, there were comparative ball drop tests showing conventional glass failing at a height of 3 feet, while the Tesla glass survived a height of 10 feet. Why did they take the unnecessary risk of throwing balls at the windows? The drop test setup already was an effective prop.

Assuming the same balls were used, how much more severe of a test was a throw compared with a drop. We can calculate the velocity from a 10 foot drop to be 25.4 feet per second (17.3 mph) based on changing potential energy to kinetic energy (proportional to the velocity squared). I showed how to do that in a November 2, 2019 blog post titled A thought provoking how to book by Randall Munroe. A major league baseball pitcher can throw a 100 mph fastball. Even if Franz only threw at 50 mph, that would still be far worse than the drop test. A drop test is more controllable than a throw. The rush of adrenaline during the demo could make you throw harder than you did during a rehearsal.  

Folks in the news media are not like the rest of the audience, who just want a presentation to succeed. They are looking instead for something startling to gain attention – a Man bites Dog story headline rather than the usual  boring Dog bites Man. Don Henley described that perverse attitude in his 1982 song, Dirty Laundry (see YouTube video):

“I make my living off the evening news

Just give me something, something I can use

People love it when you lose,

They love dirty laundry”

A cartoon man falling was Photoshopped from an 1890 lithograph at the Library of Congress. A man biting a (hot) dog was taken from this image at Wikimedia Commons.