Tesla Cybertruck 1/4 mile performance vs Porsche 911 debunked — Tesla engineer responds to clarify numbers were simulated from 1/8-mile run

Tesla's claim that the “revolutionary” Cybertruck can complete the quarter-mile seemed outlandish when the company's CEO, Elon Musk, made it at the delivery event. Shortly after that, some users on X (formerly Twitter) pointed out that the video in fact showed the Cybertruck beating the Porsche across an 1/8-mile strip, instead of the whole 1/4-mile drag strip.

More recently, Engineering Explained on YouTube has analysed Tesla's video of the claimed 1/4-mile feat, applied some mathematics, and figured out that Tesla's Cybertruck doesn't stand a chance against the Porsche 911 while towing another Porsche 911.

To start, Jason from Engineering Explained confirms with satellite images and the video footage that Tesla's video is in fact of a 1/8-mile run instead of the claimed 1/4-mile. He then jumps into the maths, using the video's frame rate to figure out the gap between the Cybertruck and the Porsche during the 1/8-mile event.

This information is then used to extrapolate what the 1/4-mile performance of the Cybertruck and 911 would be, ultimately figuring out that the Tesla Cybertruck's 1/4-mile time while towing the Porsche would likely be at a minimum 12.3 seconds.

Jason assumes from the momentary pauses in the video that the Porsche Tesla used was the 911 Carrera T, which has the slowest acceleration of the lot of current-generation Porsche 911s thanks to its manual transmission. This works out in Tesla's favour, because it allows the EV maker to claim it is faster than one of the most well-known sports cars on the planet. This particular Porsche 911 model completes the 1/4 mile in 12.2 seconds.

Based on this conservative maths alone, the Tesla Cybertruck towing the Porsche 911 Carrera T is at least 0.1 seconds behind the Porsche 911 on its own, but that's not even the most damning part. Jason's analysis of the performance took Tesla's video at face value, calculating the Porsche's and Cybertruck's 1/8-mile performance using the video that clearly showed the Cybertruck beating the Porsche in the sprint.

However, in a later post on X, it was revealed that third-party testing actually found that the Porsche 911 Carrera T can complete the 1/8-mile sprint in 8.0 seconds instead of the 8.38 seconds shown in the Cybertruck promotional material. This testing puts the Porsche 911 Carrera T ahead of the Cybertruck towing the Porsche by a quarter of a second (0.25 s), refuting Tesla's claims entirely. 

The analysis of Tesla's own promotional material and additional information obtained by Engineering Explained via MotorTrend refutes Tesla's Cybertruck performance claims entirely, implying that Tesla is misrepresenting the performance of its electric pickup to potential buyers.

Buy a Cybertruck 1/24 die-cast metal toy car on Amazon or read about the Cybertruck's development in Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk.