According to Engineering Explained – Tesla made a false claim when the company advertised that the new Tesla Cybertruck beat a new Porsche 911 in a 1/4-mile drag race while towing a Porsche 911. This may not come as a surprise to you, but the record needs to be set straight. We were skeptical of this Cybertruck marketing stunt from the very beginning because we do many pickup truck drag races and towing 0-60 MPH performance tests.
We can all agree that electric vehicles are some of the quickest and fastest vehicles ever made.
Pickup Truck Drag Racing
The quickest pickup truck that we have ever tested at TFLtruck is a new Rivian R1T quad-motor. According to our GPS-based instruments, a Rivian R1T ran a quarter-mile in 11.89 seconds at 112.1 MPH. Take a look at the video below and the results. (We have not yet tested a Tesla Cybertruck tri-motor or dual-motor in Colorado.)
As always, we test in Colorado at an elevation close to 1 mile (5,280 feet) above sea level.
The reason why the 1,000-horsepower GMC Hummer EV truck is not the quickest in our 1/4-mile testing is that its top speed is limited to 106 MPH. The speed limiter is determined by the capability of the tires. The Hummer EV is wearing the latest Goodyear Wrangler Territory MT tires. It’s a combination of many factors: the tires must support the Hummer’s 9,000+ lbs curb weight and 1,000 horsepower combined output.
Towing 0-60 MPH Testing
We do the trailer towing 0-60 MPH testing as a way to judge how a truck’s performance changes when you load it up heavy. This is also a way to see what it would be like when merging on a highway with a large trailer behind you. As a rule of thumb when towing a trailer that weighs around 7,000 lbs, “you double your combined weight, and you more than double your truck’s 0-60 MPH acceleration time.”
Here is an example of this 0-60 MPH testing with a trailer.
Here is a summary of how a new Toyota Tundra twin-turbo V6, a Ford F-150 Raptor twin-turbo V6, and a Ram TRX supercharged V8 handle this test.
Tesla Cybertruck Marketing Stunt
The Tesla Cybertruck tri-motor Cyberbeast is listed to have: 845 horsepower combined, a claimed 0-60 MPH of 2.6 seconds, and a top speed of 130 MPH. Jason from Engineering Explained studied Tesla’s drag race video in great detail and concluded that the race that Tesla showed was actually over a 1/8-mile (not a traditional 1/4-mile drag race). All verbal and written statements that Tesla originally made referred to the Cybertruck beating Porsche over a 1/4-mile. Hence, this is and was a false claim.
A member of the Tesla team responded to Engineering Explained on social media. The Tesla contact stated that Tesla indeed performed a 1/8-mile run. The Tesla Cybertruck tri-motor with a trailer and a Porsche on the trailer ran the 1/8-mile in 7.808 seconds at 88 MPH. The trailer’s tires were rated a top speed of 80 MPH, so the Tesla team elected not to try a full-speed run over the full quarter-mile.
Tesla did not confirm which Porsche 911 version they used, and whether the Porsche’s driver got the best out of the car or not. Jason made an educated guess that Tesla used a base 911 with a manual transmission.
Here is Jason’s explanation.
