The glass did perfectly on the drop test, but broke immediately when Franz threw the ball bearing at it, and it happened twice in a row. Franz doesn't skip arm day.
https://charlierose.com/videos/16694
This is an absolutely fascinating roundtable that Franz von Holzhausen participated in back in 2008 with Charlie Rose. At the time he was still the chief designer at Mazda North America, having by then departed from Volkswagen.
For those who aren't aware, von Holzhausen was one of the designers who was key in designing the well-known Volkswagen New Beetle and also assisted in design of the Audi TT. He is also notable for a stint at General Motors where he designed the Pontiac Solstice. At Mazda he was responsible for the design of the Kabura concept car.
Watching this interview was fascinating because of the way von Holzhausen spoke of the philosophy of design, not just of cars but in general. It was also pretty interesting to see some of his more wild concept car designs at Mazda. More importantly, you can see how some aspects of his design philosophy made it all the way to production vehicles, including his love of sloping glass roofs which has found a place on both the Model S and Model 3 as the distinctive all-glass roofs you can option on those production cars.
Also interesting is his focus on aerodynamics on several of those concept cars, which has today resulted in the production Model S and Model 3 as cars with extremely slippery drag coefficients (0.24 and 0.21 respectively).
Last, as an alum of the Audi design school, it's pretty easy to see the Audi RS7 in the Model S. In fact they look like ICE engine and electric twins, something which is extremely apparent when seen side-by-side in this Motor Trend Head 2 Head video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scyYfbL5P9w
I really enjoyed watching this old interview and it's pretty interesting to see how Franz von Holzhausen's design philosophy and history is seen in his current Tesla designs.
Was he THE GUY in automobile design when Tesla snatched him up from Mazda?
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1086180_tesla-takes-the-lead-on-dumping-door-mirrors-for-video-cameras
Replacement with video cameras is an option, but has a regulatory hurdle in getting them approved for reliability and functionality. EVs, looking for every recovered mile, would immediately benefit, but so would high-mileage cars like the Elio. I don't recall if Elio has explored this approach, and if it has assisted with the regulation issues. Perhaps an Elio is classed differently?
Have cameras been an option long enough to generate the data necessary to support the deletion of the side view mirrors, or is more information required?
The Elio also shares the direct-sales approach with Tesla; it's interesting how two different engineers are approaching the same problem from two ends of the scale, and have reached some of the same conclusions.
https://preview.redd.it/84mp7xh1ro281.jpg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa1c25dddabd03098d9c468b683e76d615e705b0
Modern historian and youtube tend to portray him at utterly incompetent while guys like Hindenburg,Ludendorf and Boris Shaposhnikov was really impressed with him. What your verdict was he a good strategist/Chief of staff,And more importantly was he the right man for the job of leading the Austro-Hungarian army throughout the war?
