Christine Eichin knew she wanted a Cybertruck immediately. It was November 2019, and she was sitting in the audience at Tesla’s design center in Hawthorne, Calif. On stage, Elon Musk, wearing a black leather jacket, had just unveiled the Cybertruck, Tesla’s eye-popping take on the pickup. A three-ton wedge of stainless steel, it looked, as Musk once put it, like "an armored personnel carrier from the future." When the truck appeared through a cloud of smoke, “there was a moment of absolute silence in the room,” Eichin says. “It was so mind-boggling.” She went back to her hotel, and ordered her Cybertruck right away.
The event that day was memorable for its theatrics. Videos showed the Cybertruck’s body work resisting a bullet fired from a 9mm handgun. At the launch, one of Musk’s assistants took a sledgehammer to the doors to demonstrate their strength. They remained undented. In a moment that has gone down in automotive folklore, the assistant then threw a metal ball at the supposedly unbreakable windows, which promptly shattered. “Room for improvement” was Musk’s insouciant response.
