Elon Musk is the inventor with the love of superlatives, bigger, faster, higher and many times you could add boom! to that as his rockets explode or his Cybertrucks windows are smashed in a big reveal. But there is clearly no such thing as bad publicity for the Tesla CEO. Despite the Oh F***ck exclamation when a metal ball made mince meat out of his Cybertrucks window; failure is not deterring Musk and he bragged on Twitter that orders for the truck has surpassed 200,000. When Porsche launched the Taycan; the talk was all about the Tesla killer. But Tesla fans were quick to point out that Tesla’s Model S beat the Taycan’s lap on the famous Nurburgring in Germany by 20 seconds. When Top Gear staged a drag race between the two cars; Porsche came out as the winner. Tesla protested that the race was not fair forcing Top Gear to release a clarification. Now Ford wants to take on Musk following Tesla’s video of a Cybertruck outperforming a Ford, claiming the video that Musk showed was not fair. Musk, who thrives on competition and sees setbacks as a brief pause in his quests, of course, replied “bring it on.” – Linda van Tilburg
Musk accepts Ford challenge to apples-to-apples truck tug of war
By Keith Naughton
(Bloomberg) – Tesla’s Elon Musk plainly says his pickup is a “better truck than an F-150.” Ford is taking issue with that claim.
While releasing a series of specs last week for Cybertruck, which is scheduled to start deliveries as soon as late 2021, Musk called up a video of the the pickup in a tug-of-war against Ford’s best-selling F-150. He tweeted a clip of the test on Sunday showing his vehicle pulling a screeching Ford model up a hill.
Cybertruck pulls F-150 uphill pic.twitter.com/OfaqUkrDI3
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2019
hey @elonmusk send us a cybertruck and we will do the apples to apples test for you 😉😉😉https://t.co/H3v6dCZeV5
— sunny madra (@sundeep) November 25, 2019
Tesla and Ford have been at this before. More than a year after Musk tweeted a boast about how much weight Tesla’s truck would be able to tow, Ford released a promotional video of an electric F-150 prototype dragging more than 1 million pounds of double-decker rail cars.
Here’s a breakdown of how Ford’s most popular gasoline-fueled F-150 stacks up against Tesla’s most commonly ordered Cybertruck as of Saturday, according to a Musk tweet.
Cybertruck |
F-150 XLT SuperCrew 4X4 |
|
|---|---|---|
Drivetrain |
Dual motor all-wheel electric drive | 3.5 litre EcoBoost V-6 |
Price |
$49,900 | $47,150 |
Range |
300+ miles | 684 miles |
Bed length |
6.5 feet | 6.5 feet |
Towing capacity |
10,000+ pounds | 12,700 pounds |
Ground clearance |
Up to 16 inches | 9.3 inches |
Suspension |
Adaptive air | Independent double-wishbone front, leaf spring and solid axle rear |
Body panels |
High-strength stainless steel | High-strength aluminium |
Approach angle |
35 degrees | 25.5 degrees |
Departure angle |
28 degrees | 26.4 degrees |
