‘They picked the wrong vehicle’: Musk defends Cybertruck after Trump hotel explosion
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Tesla boss denounces ‘evil knuckleheads’ after vehicle blown up outside of president-elect’s luxury resort and claims its design prevented deadlier consequences and greater destruction. Elon Musk has leapt to the defense of his Tesla Cybertruck after one of the vehicles exploded outside of a Donald Trump-owned luxury hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, on New Year’s Day in what now appears to have been a terrorist incident that left one person dead and seven more injured.
![[Elon Musk praises robustness of his Tesla Cybertruck’s structure for ensuring the incident in Las Vegas did not have even deadlier consequences]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/02/11/b3c5a1c0885107cef8195b4f30acc15cY29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzM1OTAxMDgw-2.78574756.jpg)
The driver of the truck, which was rented in Colorado and driven south, was killed in the blast and has since been named by local media as US Army veteran Matthew Livelsberger of Colorado Springs. The incident came just hours after another vehicle ploughed into a crowd of pedestrians in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, leaving 15 people dead and many more hurt.
“Will post more information as soon as we learn anything. We’ve never seen anything like this.”. In an update approximately 80 minutes later, Musk reported that the explosion had not been the result of a technical fault with the truck. “All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion.”.
“Both this Cybertruck and the F-150 suicide bomb in New Orleans were rented from Turo. Perhaps they are linked in some way.”. While investigators have said they are looking at possible connections between the two incidents, there is no basis at the time of writing for suggesting they are indeed linked.
