The Cybertruck is fast, but it’s not that fast. As it turns out, Tesla’s viral video depicting the Cyberbeast beating a Porsche 911 in a race while towing another Porsche 911 was at the very least misleading. MotorTrend took it upon themselves to recreate the same conditions in some extensive drag race testing, which debunked Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s bold claim.
During the delivery event of the Cybertruck, Musk claimed that the Tesla’s latest EV could “tow a Porsche 911 across a quarter mile faster than the Porsche 911 can go by itself.” According to MotorTrend’s tests, that didn’t happen once.
Thoroughly Debunked
To recreate Tesla’s demo, MotorTrend pitted the Cyberbeast against the slowest Porsche 911 it could buy, which turns out to be the 2023 Porsche 911 Carrera T. Looking at the weight difference, the Cyberbeast payload totaled more than 11,000 pounds counting the EV, the Porsche 911 it was towing, the trailer, and its driver, while the Porsche side was just the car and driver coming in at just under 3,500 pounds.
Looking at that weight disparity alone, either the Cybertruck is packing an astronomical amount of power or Tesla was obscuring the full picture. Now, we know for sure since the Porsche alone won six out of the six quarter-mile drag races that MotorTrend set up against the most performance-focused Cybertruck trim.
Things get a little tricky when we’re talking about the eighth-mile dash, which is not as common as the gold-standard quarter-mile sprint. Instead, the Cybertruck only won two out of the six races when the cars faced off in this shorter race. So even in a test where the Cybertruck won sometimes, it only succeeded a third of the time. This is made worse by the fact that Jason Fenske from Engineering Explained previously pointed out that Tesla only did eighth-mile races instead of the quarter-mile claims, which Tesla’s lead engineer for the Cybertruck Wes Morrill confirmed on X.
A False Accolade
With even more definitive proof, we can now say there’s no way the top trim of the Cybertruck hauling a Porsche 911 is faster than even the slowest 911 out there today when it comes to the typical quarter-mile drag race. The original video accomplished exactly what Tesla wanted, which was to create more buzz for the Cybertruck, but we hope people weren’t making major purchases based on this misleading setup.
Of course, the Cybertruck is still plenty fast. At the top end, the Cyberbeast model can go from 0 to 60 mph in 2.6 seconds. However, it might be helpful to be skeptical about Tesla’s claims about its Cybertruck.
