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Comment by xcv123 | Hacker News Reader

Motorsports enthusiasts look at Nürburgring lap times. The Porsche 911 is at the highest level of performance on any track where you actually have to use the brakes and steering wheel. If the Cybertruck can do a good lap on the Nürburgring then its "FAST", but it probably isn't, due to weight. The 911 is not built for drag racing, it's built for a track with corners where you have to use the brakes and steering wheel.

In terms of pure drag racing the Cybertruck is a loser. Top Fuel dragsters can do 0 to 60 in ~0.8 seconds and can do a quarter mile in less than 5 seconds. There's no comparison here.

But the Cybertruck has an insane amount of torque, 10x beyond the equivalent ICE vehicle. It can tow, that's for sure.

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But tow what? The bed is too small to be useful and so far as anyone knows there isn't an all-steel CyberCaravan or CyberDinghy in the pipeline.

Being able to tow big heavy stuff isn't necessarily a great idea, because big heavy stuff needs to stop as well as start.

If you're used to accelerating hard and braking hard, your big heavy stuff is going to have real problems with that.

I know nothing about the CyberDuck but

> Being able to tow big heavy stuff isn't necessarily a great idea, because big heavy stuff needs to stop as well as start.

is a solved problem in the caravanning | rural | Australian world.

Hayman-Reese hitches with anti sway bars provide strong transfer of pulling force for starting, load control under braking - and heavy load trailers can be dual axle with slaved electric brakes to add to the stopping power of the lead vehicle.

eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM2--wSb5d0

It has the same bed as a Ford F150 and that's the most sold "car" in the US.

Reality is, no one needs a truck, but everyone buys a truck. And as long as people are buying trucks for vanity purposes, this pure vanity vehicle is going to be top of their pile.

Can electric vehicles (let alone this absurdly ridiculous example) reliably make it around the 'ring more than once without having to recharge? It seems like EV range drops off a cliff in all but the most idyllic driving conditions--flat road, minimal acceleration (cruise control), room temperature, no precipitation, aerodynamically clean, unladen. Add load, off-nominal temp, snow, drag, weight, etc. and range drops precipitously. One example I know of is a Model 3 doing a cross-country road trip in winter with two adults and their luggage couldn't do more than 75mi range per charge in Montana due to strong crosswinds. It would be great to see some actual data on off-nominal performance, which is what actually matters for a utility vehicle as opposed to a road toy.

Was driving an EV in freezing / snowy conditions the other day, up a mountain, with a blinking battery light. I couldn't believe how much running the heater and AC (required for demisting), the cold and going up a hill sucked the battery.

In the same car only a week before in much better weather, I did a similar trip, twice.

Any Cybertruck that could make it to the Nürburgring on its own would lose to pretty much any car. It can't ever go faster than 60mph if street legal in Europe.

Motorways are 70mph or in Germany 80mph, although some sections of the autobahn are unrestricted!?

Not for vehicles with MaM over 3500kg. They have to be fitted with a limiter that stops them from going faster than 60mph. Can't be overridden by the driver. If you remove the limiter, the car is no longer legal.

Furthermore, you can't drive it with a regular driver's license. Requires you to get a C1 license.

So it may have fast acceleration from 0-60mph, but that's as fast as it will ever go.

You can have the MaM adjusted to 3500 kg. That's what they used to do with H2's. Limit them to 3500 kg so you're breaking the law if you actually use the cargo capacity of your 3 ton tank.

I see, it depends on what you consider a 'good lap'. I expect it might be able to do Nurburgring faster than many cars I consider nimble.

But I also don't think that 0 to 60 in 2.6s is 'a loser'. Cars that take twice as much feel already very fast to me.

By "loser" I only meant by comparison with the best ICE in that category of pure drag racing. It's definitely not a loser, but it is a "loser" versus ICE.

I'm not saying the Cybertruck is shit. It's a torque monster and I want one. But it will struggle with cornering because of its 6800 pound kerb weight which is double the 911 kerb weight. Too heavy, can't compete.

What's most impressive to me is they figured out how to make flat body panels on the Cybertruck without warping (which would ruin the aesthetics). It would look cheap if they didn't get that right.

Comparing it with ICE engines that aren’t street legal misses the point.

Try it with the most illegal electric vehicle. Won't compete with Top Fuel dragsters. Fundamental physical limitations of batteries versus combustion.

But the Cybertruck has 10x the torque of the equivalent ICE vehicle, so it can beat the 911 in a drag race, while towing a 911. Incredible. This is where it completely destroys ICE.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1730331223992472029

You’re still missing the point! I don’t care about the performance of illegal vehicles and neither do 99.99% of other vehicle buyers.

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