Can you explain why 'super strong windows' is a useful feature to have? I've never owned a pickup so I wouldn't know, but do the windows regularly break or something? Never happened to any of the cars I or anyone I know ever owned. Is it against car thieves or something? Because I imagine they would find a way around this anyway.

What I'm wondering about is personal safety in case of an accident (water, fire, etc). How do you get out? In some EU countries a safety hammer to break the glass in case you are trapped is actually mandatory on new cars, how does unbreakable glass deal with that?

Same goes for the sharp angles by the way, as demonstrated, this design will never be road-legal in the EU because new cars are not allowed to have sharp features for pedestrian safety.

Never had a chip in your windscreen? Happens to our cars with annoying regularity here on flat well maintained Dutch roads. Imagine what happens to your windows if you regularly drive on construction sites or unpaved roads

Having a damn near indestructible rear window on a pickup would be nice. I can't count the number of times I've not thrown something into the bed of my truck from a distance for fear of it bouncing into the window.

Had to scroll way too far to see this. I personally have broken my dad’s rear window in his truck pushing equipment too hard into the back of the bed.

Trucks need to be built to take abuse, and this truck has a lot of glass. Hence they want the glass to be practical, which means not replacing sheets every time you go off road and take impacts from road debris.

Any engineer who has live demo’d a beta product should know exactly what Elon was feeling in that moment. “Oh my fucking god” just about sums it up.

No, they didn’t expect it to shatter, there’s no way Elon planned on standing in front of a damaged Cybertruck for the rest of the event.

I got the impression the live impact tests on the real product where a last minute edition. Franz, “Are you sure?!” before throwing the bearing about sums it up.

The same mentality that lets Elon decide to hit his Cybertruck with a sledgehammer on stage is the mentality which gets us Cybertruck in the first place. You have to appreciate the beauty of the whole approach / package.

IMO you absolutely do not get to pick and choose all the innovation that comes from Tesla/SpaceX/Elon without all the drama, and failures, and missteps. This is the thing people don’t understand. You do not get to have one without the other in the world we live in, they are flip sides of the same coin.

> Can you explain why 'super strong windows' is a useful feature to have?

I am also not the target market and it is not something I personally find useful. But the post I was replying to was nonsensical (I don't see why they didn't pick the commodity option -> must be gaslighting).

Your argument would be far more compelling if someone could actually tell us why exactly the target market wants extra strong windows. I might not be the target market, but if someone says "Well I have a Ford and gravel flicks up and smashes my passenger side windows" I would be able to understand. The problem is that even the people doing the demonstration didn't actually tell us why you would want stronger windows.

> new cars are not allowed to have sharp features for pedestrian safety

Do you have more information on this. I know there's minimum radius for blunting sheet metal panel edges on the fascias that are prone to pedestrian collision. Seems pretty trivial change to smooth things out a little, though I wonder how much of the sharp edges here is value engineering vs desired aesthetic.

The EU (and Japan and Australia) has a range of rules now for increasing pedestrian safety, including softer materials on the front bumper, hoods that give so that they cushion the impact if a pedestrian is hit, and limiteing sharp protrusions / edges on the front of the vehicle. The new G-wagon, for example, has turn signals that flex down into the vehicle on an impact. https://www.autonews.com/article/20120423/OEM03/304239967/eu...

Have you ever driven off-road before?

Whatever glass they put in there will essentially be a commodity. They will have lots of options for getting it manufactured and so on.

Which affects the final price and also the mechanical requirements.

Bullet-proof glass isn't an exotic item, but you're not going to find it in most consumer products.