Soccer ball 1, windshield 0

On our way home from Victoria, BC, we stopped to visit my daughter and her family near Portland for several hours. There's limited parking in her neighborhood, so we ended up several houses down the street from hers. Later when we were out front playing with the grandkids, we heard a car alarm honking down the street, and thought nothing of it. You always hear bogus alarms going off, right? A little later I pulled my phone out to check something or other, and there was a Tesla alert telling me it was my alarm we'd been hearing. I had my phone on buzz-only mode, and I rarely feel that in my pocket when I'm doing something like running around with grandkids, so I hadn't noticed the alert in realtime. So I walked down the street to check out the car, still figuring it was something benign, like someone bonked the car while walking by.

Nope! The windshield was shattered in a lovely sunburst pattern, centered almost perfectly in the glass, radiating all the way to the edges in the case of a few of the cracks. S***! I hopped inside, and pulled up Sentry. The video shows two boys about 10 kicking a soccer ball back and forth along the street. Then comes the fateful shot. One shot goes left of where the kid intended, lofts out of the field of view of the forward camera, then comes back in bigger than life and bounces off the glass. You can actually see the glass flex a bit at the moment of impact. The last frame of the clip is the other kid running into view, looking straight at the window, mouth open in a circle, with an expression that says, "Oh no!" It's kinda cute, actually.

So I recruited my son-in-law, and he recognized one of the boys, and led me to the right house. I met his mom. Kid IDed the other kid, and we went over together and met the other mom too. Much discussion and phone calls to the moms' partners. Bottom line is the two families have promised to reimburse, though they were discussing among themselves the distribution of responsibility, and whether to file an insurance claim or pay out of pocket. I don't care so long as they come through.

Here's the view from inside at a Supercharger after we got back on the road.

Look closely and you can also see the shadow of the crack pattern on the dash.

We made it the 300 miles home, but the cracks are pretty annoying, especially when the light hits just wrong. One crack goes in front of the cameras, causing the car to intermittently think it's raining, and turn on the wipers.

Tomorrow I'll work on getting it replaced. (Safelite has given a price of about $1900, including over $600 to calibrate the cameras, which seems crazy--I mean, what's their hourly labor rate?)

I'm really surprised a soccer ball could beat a windshield. Shows what I know!

 

[vogz]

IMHO, The Tesla glass is really really weak. I've had two windshields crack in ~2.5 years, and I've had zero windows crack in the prior 10 years on different cars.

Tesla uses Saint Gobain auto glass. It's no different than what almost all major auto manufacturers in the world use on their cars.

Saint Gobain supplies car glasses to all major car brands like Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Skoda, Volkswagen, Volvo, Ford, Fiat, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, etc.

Saint Gobain Sekurit - car windshield manufacturers

Buy Saint Gobain Sekurit windshield in Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad for your Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, Landrover, Porsche, Skoda, Volvo

windshieldstore.in

The issue with the 3 is how larger the windshield is, the angle it's at and the vehicles aerodynamics, not the strength of the glass.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

It's true that Tesla windshields are weaker than any other car. But also true that every other car has a weaker windshield than every other car.

Automakers have many incentives to make weaker windshields, like cost, performance, and pedestrian protection, but few incentives to make them stronger since their competitors have all the same goals.

 

[Justjim]

On our way home from Victoria, BC, we stopped to visit my daughter and her family near Portland for several hours. There's limited parking in her neighborhood, so we ended up several houses down the street from hers. Later when we were out front playing with the grandkids, we heard a car alarm honking down the street, and thought nothing of it. You always hear bogus alarms going off, right? A little later I pulled my phone out to check something or other, and there was a Tesla alert telling me it was my alarm we'd been hearing. I had my phone on buzz-only mode, and I rarely feel that in my pocket when I'm doing something like running around with grandkids, so I hadn't noticed the alert in realtime. So I walked down the street to check out the car, still figuring it was something benign, like someone bonked the car while walking by.

Nope! The windshield was shattered in a lovely sunburst pattern, centered almost perfectly in the glass, radiating all the way to the edges in the case of a few of the cracks. S***! I hopped inside, and pulled up Sentry. The video shows two boys about 10 kicking a soccer ball back and forth along the street. Then comes the fateful shot. One shot goes left of where the kid intended, lofts out of the field of view of the forward camera, then comes back in bigger than life and bounces off the glass. You can actually see the glass flex a bit at the moment of impact. The last frame of the clip is the other kid running into view, looking straight at the window, mouth open in a circle, with an expression that says, "Oh no!" It's kinda cute, actually.

So I recruited my son-in-law, and he recognized one of the boys, and led me to the right house. I met his mom. Kid IDed the other kid, and we went over together and met the other mom too. Much discussion and phone calls to the moms' partners. Bottom line is the two families have promised to reimburse, though they were discussing among themselves the distribution of responsibility, and whether to file an insurance claim or pay out of pocket. I don't care so long as they come through.

Here's the view from inside at a Supercharger after we got back on the road.
View attachment 942341
Look closely and you can also see the shadow of the crack pattern on the dash.

We made it the 300 miles home, but the cracks are pretty annoying, especially when the light hits just wrong. One crack goes in front of the cameras, causing the car to intermittently think it's raining, and turn on the wipers.

Tomorrow I'll work on getting it replaced. (Safelite has given a price of about $1900, including over $600 to calibrate the cameras, which seems crazy--I mean, what's their hourly labor rate?)

I'm really surprised a soccer ball could beat a windshield. Shows what I know!

Last winter I was driving on a secondary hiway, so speeds were around 80kph, 160kph combined when a piece of ice came off a car coming at me. I thought someone had thrown a pack of paper out the window, so about 8 1/2" x 11" x 1 1/2" thick. It hit my X directly on the interior camera position. Given the size of the X's windshield I was amazed that it didn't shatter or even crack, like my ear drums! It was loud. The ice had shattered!
Incredible that a soft soccer ball would shatter a windshield!

 

[CharleyBC]

Last winter I was driving on a secondary hiway, so speeds were around 80kph, 160kph combined when a piece of ice came off a car coming at me. I thought someone had thrown a pack of paper out the window, so about 8 1/2" x 11" x 1 1/2" thick. It hit my X directly on the interior camera position. Given the size of the X's windshield I was amazed that it didn't shatter or even crack, like my ear drums! It was loud. The ice had shattered!
Incredible that a soft soccer ball would shatter a windshield!

Glad you survived that hunk of ice! And yeah, I remain surprised it was a soccer ball. If I didn't have the video as proof, I would have guessed it was a vandal with a bat.