No, Tesla Cybertruck Is *Not* Faster Than Porsche (While Towing)

you can say whatever you want on the internet and even if it isn't true some people will believe it that's why as a 6'6 250 lb man capable of bench pressing twice my body weight I feel the need to call out nonsense when I see it the latest example Tesla showcased their cybertruck towing a Porsche 911 while beating up Porsche 9911 in a drag race now when I first saw this I thought wow this is a genuinely clever and well executed marketing stunt it showcases the potent acceleration of EVS that the world of combustion engine struggles to match but then I heard rumors it didn't actually complete a/ quarter mile in the drag race instead it only completed the Eighth Mile this was easily verifiable watching the video because you can see in the split view that when the cybertruck crosses the Finish Line it's only halfway to the timing boards which Mark the end of the quarter mile now when it comes to drag racing the quarter mile is the most important metric it's why Tesla provides the quarter mile time at the end of the drag race video for the cybertruck and yeah it's misleading to show this immediately after watching an eighth mile race without informing the viewers but it's not like Tesla is saying it can tow a Porsche 9911 across the quar mile faster than the Porsche 911 can go by itself it can tow a Porsche 9911 across A4 mile faster than the Porsche 911 can go by itself say what faster than a 911 while towing a 911 okay so two statements that definitely seem like blatant lies back to back will ignore the pedantic definition of the word faster the Cyber truck has a top speed of 130 mph the Porsche 9/11's top speed is 181 mph there is no world where stock to stock the Cyber truck is faster as in higher top speed yet they even show on the screen faster than a 911 which again is objectively not true now did I just say I wouldn't get pedantic and then suddenly get very pedantic yes yes I did do you see how annoying that but what about the quarter mile statement now perhaps an obvious rhetorical question but if the cybertruck actually was quicker in the quarter mile while Towing why would they end the race at the Eighth Mile in the video now that's of course the easy way out and this is engineering explained where we use math to find definitive answers to questions that nobody really cares about so let's deter which vehicle would actually be quicker in the quarter mile now before we do the math we need to be absolutely certain that the cars are running an eighth Mile and not the4 mile so very quickly you can see there are bleachers when the vehicles cross the finish line then we get an overhead view and you can see that that finish line is across from where the bleachers end which marks the halfway point of the track you can see the timing boards are all the way in the back where the quarter mile ends and there are no bleachers at this point clearly the Finish Line was at the 8th mile but if that's not good enough you can go on Google Maps for Sacramento Raceway Park and measure the distance from the starting line to the line across from the bleachers which turns out to be 660 ft or an eigh Mile and if you measure to the timing boards you get 1,320 ft or a/4 mile so we have positively confirmed the video shows them finishing the race at the 8th Mile Line okay so ultimately what we're trying to figure out is is a cyber truck towing a Porche 91 quicker in the quarter mile than a Porsche 911 doing it all by itself so we have a lot of unknowns here as you can see so let's establish what we do know well we do know that a Tesla cyber truck by itself can complete the quarter mile and 11 seconds dead at 119 mph as verified by Jason kamissa who took one on the drag strip okay so how quick is the 911 by itself all right so Car and Driver tested the current gen generation base Porsche 911 which did the4 Mile in 11.5 seconds at 120 m per hour so you can see that's not a very big gap and it seems highly unlikely that a Tesla Towing another vehicle would do better than 115 however we don't know exactly which Porche 911 Tesla was testing against we do know that there is a slower portion 911 out there the 911t and the reason why it's slower is because it has a manual transmission offered so both car and driver and Motor Trend have both tested the 2023 Porsche 911 Carrera T and that vehicle has a quar mile time of 12.2 seconds at 116 mph again slower because it's using a manual transmission rather than Porsche's very quick dual clutch transmission now hopefully this goes without saying but I think it's important that we use third-party test results to understand what is the the slowest possible quarter mile time for a current generation Porsche 911 which according to Motor Trend and Car and Driver is 12.2 seconds so that's the target to beat for the Tesla cybertruck towing a 911 all right so we've established our Baseline and now we're trying to figure out how long does the Tesla Towing the 911 take to complete the quarter mile now we don't know this because they don't show the full clip of it completing a quarter mile however they do show a full uninterrupted clip of it completing the eighth mil so we can get this information so if we start the clock at the very first frame before the stage light goes out which indicates when the drag strip timing begins and end the clock when the cybertruck first touches the Finish Line you get 8.25 seconds this comes from Counting frames or the number of images that make up the video so in this case we have 198 frames for it to complete the quarter mile at a frame rate of 24 frames per second 198 divided 24 that gives you 8.25 seconds now if you do the same thing for the 911 the stage light actually goes out one frame later however it takes four more frames to cross the finish line and so you have a total of 2011 frames at 24 frames per second giving you a time of 8.38 okay so how quickly can the Cyber truck by itself run the Eighth Mile well once again thanks to Jason kamisa we have this number so the average of two runs running in opposite directions the fyber truck completes the Eighth Mile in 6.94 seconds at 99 mph okay so if the Cyber truck towing a 911 completes the 8th Mile in 8.25 seconds and a cyber truck on its own completes that 8th Mile in 6.94 seconds well that means we need an additional 1.31 seconds to complete that Eighth Mile while Towing what does that mean well it means at an absolute minimum we have to add 1.31 seconds to our cyber trucks quarter mile time of 11 seconds in other words 11 + 1.31 that gives us 12.3 seconds absolute best case against the 9/11 which can do it in 12.2 seconds boom it cannot win it cannot win in this race realistically that's all you need to know it cannot beat the slowest current gen 911 while towing a 9911 in the quarter mile but yeah again I'm not quite satisfied to get get a more accurate answer let's figure out how quickly the Cyber truck is going when it crosses the Eighth Mile Mark all right so we're trying to figure out the Cyber truck's velocity velocity is equal to distance divided by time in this case for distance we're going to use the entire vehicle with the cybertruck towing the 9911 and per time we'll say how long does it take this entire length of vehicle to cross the finish line so the Cyber truck itself is about 224 in between the Cyber Tru and the Porche 911 looks to be a little bit bigger than one wheel of the Cyber truck the wheels of the Cyber Tru about 3 ft so let's call that Gap 4T and then we have the length of the 911 which is 178 in about so you add that all up you've got 450 in divid by 12 that gives you a distance of 37.5 ft okay so how much time does it take the entire vehicle to cross the finish line so if you start with the frame just before it touches the Finish Line we go 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 frames and you can see the back of the Porsche is just over the start of the finish line so in s frames or 7 24s of a second we traveled the full length of the towing vehicle all right so 37.5 ft ided 724 of a second gives us about 128. 6 ft per second or about 88 mph so in the Eighth Mile the cyber Tru Towing the 911 does it at 8.25 at about 88 mph so now we can get a better estimate for the remaining time to complete that final Eighth Mile okay so you can see there's an 11 mph gap between the Cyber Tru on its own and the cybertruck towing a 911 so let's be generous and say that it can maintain this 11 MH gap for the remainder of the4 Mile so we're going to be going from 88 mph to the final speed of 119 - 11 that gives us 108 in other words an average speed across that 8th mile of 98 mph if we want to figure out time we just take distance divided by velocity so we have .125 1/8 of a mile divided by 98 mph multiply that by 3600 seconds in an hour and that gives us a total time for that remaining 8th mile of 4.59 seconds so if we add 4.59 to 8.25 well we get a realistic quarter mile time of around 12.84 seconds at about 108 mph again quite a gap between that and a Porsche 911 so as you can see it will be slower while towing a 9911 in the quarter mile all right so a couple very important concluding remarks to me all Porsche 911s look pretty much the same I don't know exactly which one Tesla used in the video Elon describes it as follows and I I should say this is this is an actual Porsche we literally just got it from the dealer 2023 Porsche 911 if I had to guess I would guess that it's the Carrera T because that's the slowest 911 and it's also the lightest 9911 so that would give the towing Tesla as much of an advantage as possible one indication to me is that you can see a very noticeable Lurch when the porsa seemingly changes gears you can see the whole car heaves forward briefly something you wouldn't expect to see if it was a dual clutch Porsche because even during a gear shift these dual clutch Transmissions maintain positive torque meaning very little if any visual indication of lurching the base 911 does not offer a manual and it's quicker which is what leads me to believe that it's the 911t okay the second Point what the cybertruck achieved here is still bonkers the fact that it can put down A4 Mile in the high 12s or low 13s while Towing a Porsche 911 is nuts and hilarious to watch this is another case where the engineering of the vehicle alone was absolutely enough for the cybertruck to deserve some hype so why muddy this achievement with a marketing stunt that's difficult to interpret put plainly how this was presented during the cybertruck reveal was misleading now maybe he simply misspoke but if that's the case it only seems fair to me to apologize to Porsche for misrepresenting the true Gap in Pace there's definitely interesting engineering to talk about with this vehicle so expect those videos in the future and if for some reason you're upset that I'm singling out Tesla here I have great news you can check out my video on how the Ford Lightning can't realistically tow 1 million pounds or how the SSC to Atara didn't actually hit 331 mph despite their claims I actually think the cybertruck is cool but marketing stunts that mislead the public always leave a bitter taste in my mouth or maybe that's whatever's in my cup if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below thanks for watching cheers

Channel: Engineering Explained

Views: 3,148,470

Keywords: Tesla cybertruck, tesla towing 911, tesla cybertruck towing stunt, tesla cybertruck tow, tesla towing stunt, tesla cybertruck cyberbeast, porsche 911, tesla towing porsche, engineering explained

Id: HRYS5VWXZts

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 12 2024