Ford Challenges Tesla Cybertruck to a Tug of War
Photo: Tesla
If you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, let’s get up to speed right quick: Tesla revealed its new Cybertruck, its fully electric pickup truck, at the Los Angeles Auto Show. Did anyone glom onto the fact that the Cybertruck is purported to deliver 14,000 pounds of max towing capacity or the ability to go from 0-60 mph in 2.9 seconds? Absolutely not. Why? Because it looks like a low-res model lifted from Cruis’n USA and because there was a metric ton of delicious schadenfreude to go around.
The part of Musk’s presentation that caught the attention of Ford had nothing to do with shatterproof windows that shatter or long, awkward pauses. It locked in on a video shown during the presentation and later tweeted by Musk that shows the Cybertruck obliterating a Ford F-150 in a tug of war.
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This drew the ire of Ford X Vice President Sundeep Madra, who responded to Musk on Twitter with the equivalent of FITE ME IRL:
Musk, never one to back down from the opportunity to say something dumb on Twitter, responded in kind:
Speaking of smart people who say a lot of dumb things on twitter, Neil deGrasse Tyson chimed in and suggested that Ford was at a competitive disadvantage:
A thread emerged in which Musk retorted that his truck with its electric motors would still win (offering up the absolute zinger “Physics is the law, everything else is a recommendation”), Tyson responded that Tesla load both trucks up to the max and then try the test again, Musk agreed to try the test the following week, and, presumably, someone with 10 followers tweeted “OK Boomer” for funzos.
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Ford issued a statement on Tuesday in what one can only assume was an effort to be the adult in the room, saying:
“With America’s best-selling truck for 42 years, we’ve always focused on serving our truck customers regardless of what others say or do. We look forward to our all-new F-150 hybrid coming next year and all-electric F-150 in a few years.”
Ford demonstrated the towing abilities of an all-electric F-150 prototype earlier this year in a video in which the truck towed 1.25 million pounds. Was this also a legit test? Yes. Of course it was. Why would you assume it wouldn’t be legit for a truck to tow a million pounds?
As for how the Tesla Cybertruck and electric F-150 will match up? Well, we’ll just have to see. Maybe by then folks will have adapted to how goofy the Tesla looks.
Kyle S. Johnson lives in Cincinnati, a city known by many as “the Cincinnati of Southwest Ohio.” He enjoys professional wrestling, Halloween, and also other things. He has been writing for a while, and he plans to continue to write well into the future. See more articles by Kyle.