Feeble Cybertruck Shuts Down in Real Towing Contest Against Other Truck

It just kinda gives up.

Tow Jam

The more time goes on, the more Tesla's bombastic marketing of its finally-released Cybertruck appears to have greatly oversold the vehicle's real-life capabilities.

Remember the time Tesla CEO Elon Musk showed off a Cybertruck pulling an F-150 uphill back in 2019? The video shows the brutalist pickup effortlessly overpowering the vehicle thanks to some tremendous torque right out of the gate.

But a far more recent video by the YouTube channel Cyber Hooligan, which pits the Cybertruck against a diesel Silverado pickup, that outcome flips on its head. As InsideEVs reports, the Cybertruck gives up almost immediately, allowing the Silverado to drag the 5,500-pound EV behind it helplessly.

In other words, it's not so much a match-up of raw muscle as it's a sad tale of the Cybertruck's software stopping it from competing in the first place — a far cry from what Musk showed off four years ago.

Ground Control

The YouTubers finally managed to get the Cybertruck to pull the Silverado, but only if the diesel pickup was put into park first, which seems like an extraordinary handicap.

Even physically disconnecting the anti-lock braking system on the Cybertruck didn't allow it to win the tug-of-war.

It's not the first time we've been duped by Tesla and its mercurial CEO's boisterous claims about the truck. A different promotional video showed the Cybertruck beating out a Porsche 911 — while towing a Porsche 911 — in what was allegedly a quarter-mile sprint. Eagle-eyed Reddit users, as well as YouTube channel "Engineering Explained," however, have since debunked those claims, finding the race was likely much shorter, around an eighth of a mile, and that the Porsche likely would've won over twice that distance. Tesla also likely strategically used a base trim, manual transmission 911.

Sure, it's an impressive feat of strength, but that doesn't negate Tesla's misleading claims.

All told, the EV maker has garnered a bit of a reputation when it comes to misleading advertising. A Tesla engineer also admitted last year that a 2016 video of a car driving itself was faked.

Then there are the well-documented instances of Tesla exaggerating the range of its cars. Even the Cybertruck's advertised range, all things considered, has fallen well short of expectations.

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