A Tesla Cybertruck exploded just outside the Trump Towers hotel in Las Vegas early Wednesday morning, killing the person occupying the vehicle and injuring seven others.
You’d be forgiven for initially suspecting the vehicle had burst into flames on its own, since others have previously. But investigators are now suggesting that the incident may have been an act of terrorism.
Now, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has chimed in — and instead of denouncing the mindless act of violence, he’s arguing that the brutalist and highly divisive pickup truck was a poor choice for a would-be terrorist.
In a tone-deaf response on his social media echo chamber X, Musk claimed that the “Cybertruck is the worst possible choice for a car bomb, as its stainless steel armor will contain the blast better than any other commercial vehicle.”
His defensiveness is understandable: the optics are exceptionally bad, with the Cybertruck — which has become a stand-in for Musk’s increasingly extremist views — burning in front of a hotel part-owned by his number one ally, president-elect Donald Trump.
Musk was responding to an equally tone-deaf and largely unsubstantiated tweet by Trump minion Ian Miles Cheong, who claimed that “Elon’s decision to build the Cybertruck like a tank may have saved many lives in Las Vegas today.”
“Imagine how much worse the explosion would’ve been for all those in the vicinity if it was any other vehicle,” he added.
Despite a horde of Musk defenders quickly chiming in, arguing that the Cybertruck was therefore the “toughest and most badass truck ever made,” experts quickly dismissed the claims.
“The Cybertruck survived largely intact because the guy who died built the worst ‘VBIED’ [vehicle-borne improvised explosive device] I’ve ever seen, not because the vehicle is ‘built like a tank’ (it’s not),” tweeted explosives expert Hugo Kaaman.
“If I throw tiny pebbles at a window and it doesn’t break, does that mean my windows are indestructible?” he added. “Come on.”
The Cybertruck’s purported durability has long been a point of contention. While Tesla chose to clad the exterior in a layer of stainless steel — a surprisingly poor choice for a vehicle meant for the outdoors — the Cybertruck has already experienced plenty of structural issues, from easily severed wheels to body panels that can be ripped off by hand. And that’s just from being driven around like a normal truck.
It’s unclear, of course, how a similarly sized pickup truck would’ve fared. The vehicle was rented from the carsharing app Turo, drawing an unusual connection to a separate and far more deadly New Orleans attack, which involved a man intentionally plowing a different truck into a New Year’s Eve crowd mere hours earlier.
“We are actively partnering with law enforcement authorities as they investigate both incidents,” a Turo spokesperson told CBS News.
Shortly after the Cybertruck incident in Las Vegas, Musk tweeted that the “whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now. Will post more information as soon as we learn anything.”
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” he added.
Musk also attempted to do some damage control, claiming in a separate tweet that the explosion “was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself.”
While we await more clarity on the situation — we still haven’t heard anything regarding a possible motive or whether it’s connected in any way to the New Orleans attack — Musk’s latest comments about the truck being a poor choice for a “car bomb” should certainly raise plenty of eyebrows.
Should such a quality really be a point of pride for a carmaker? Besides, we’ve already seen the Cybertruck succumb to far less extreme conditions like being put through a car wash, exposed to “direct sunlight,” or even being driven through snow.
More on the truck: Cybertruck Owner Brags and Brags About Performance in Winter… Before Suffering Terrible Surprise