When Tesla introduced the production version of the Cybertruck, it showed a video of the wedgy electric pickup beating a Porsche 911 in a drag race, while towing another Porsche 911. While that is impressive no matter the context, a claim made by CEO Elon Musk has led to controversy, and ultimately the conclusion that the world was misled.
In his presentation, Musk said that the Cybertruck could beat a 911 in a quarter-mile drag race while towing a 911. However, as our own Chris Chilton noted in a previous story, the video that Tesla showed to go along with that claim didn’t actually show a quarter-mile race.
Instead, the race was half that long, and ended at the eighth-mile mark. My esteemed colleague chalked up Musk’s false claim to a simple mistake (we tend to talk about drag racing in quarters, even though eighth-miles are a popular race length), but wondered what would have happened if the race had been allowed to continue.
Read: Tesla Cybertruck Beat 911 Over 8th-Mile, Not Quarter-Mile, While Towing
As if responding to him, Jason Fenske, host of the popular YouTube channel Engineering Explained, has attempted to find out. Using the unbroken footage of the race, as presented by Tesla, and counting the frames, he works out that with the trailer attached, the Cybertruck managed to cover the eighth-mile in 8.25 seconds.
While that is an impressive result for the Tesla, it’s significantly slower than the truck can go when it is unburdened by car and trailer. In independent testing, the Cybertruck was capable of completing the eighth-mile in just 6.94 seconds, or 1.31 seconds faster, without the trailer.
That means that, in the unlikely scenario that the gap between the burdened and unburdened truck did not grow anymore in the second eighth-mile, it would take the towing EV 1.3 seconds longer to complete the quarter-mile than a Cybertruck on its own. If you add 1.3 to the 11-second quarter-mile time that has been achieved by the truck in other tests, that amounts to 12.3 seconds.
While the exact type of Porsche 911 used in the test is not clarified, Fenske assumes that Tesla used the 911 Carrera T. Not only does the car have a manual transmission, making it one of the slowest versions of the model through the quarter-mile, it is also one of the lightest examples available, making it ideal for towing.
In both Car and Driver and Motor Trend testing, that car has been clocked completing the quarter-mile in 12.2 seconds — faster than the towing Cybertruck, based on its eighth-mile performance.
Using some even more complicated (but still generous) math, Fenske reaches the conclusion that the Cybertruck could realistically complete the quarter-mile time of 12.8 seconds while towing a 911. Although that is a very impressive feat, it suggests that Musk was incorrect in his assertion.