Tesla Cybertruck's Race Against a Porsche 911 Was Apparently an 1/8-Mile Run | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Cybertruck's Race Against a Porsche 911 Was Apparently an 1/8-Mile Run

insideevs.com

30 pointsffgjgf135 comments

If they’re lying the ad should be banned, it would be in the UK. But anyway, who cares? Racing sports cars is not what you buy a truck for, and even if you did the sports car would destroy it on corners. Make the truck slower, make it cheaper. It’s for moving stuff from a to b.

The Cybertruck is for moving people's cred points to your ledger, not for taking cinder blocks to the construction site.

> not for taking cinder blocks to the construction site

Considering the bed height of modern trucks, neither is most of the competition.

I'm skeptical of the cybertruck and my work truck can barely hit 60 in the summertime; but when it comes to EVs, including trucks, don't the high speed and torque come for "free"? In my opinion that's the biggest performance advantage of EVs over ICEs

$100k trucks are not for moving stuff from a to b (with some exceptions around very heavy and/or specialised commercial vehicles); they are for compensating for something. Like, this isn't for work, it's for showing off.

My father who owns a Rivian and pulls his construction trailer with it everyday would disagree.

Talked to him yesterday while he was charging up (since he was pulling a trailer his range was low) and he mentioned he will get the cyber truck for his business and compare the two for pulling trailers. And keep the better one.

Same in Australia, ACCC can be anal about wording in any ads. But it's unlikely to be advertised the same way.

I mean, I don't think false advertising is really allowed in the US, either, but their regulators tend to be on the slow/passive side. It look the FCC about a decade to lurch into action on paid social media astroturfing, say, long after regulators in other countries had started to deal with it.

It’s not like they are selling or planning to sell it in the UK to be fair

Fair? Serial liars use up the available goodwill until there is none left.

This is the reputation Musk and Tesla want to have. They have gone out of their way to earn it. It's a shame they feel the need to lie so often.

I am not sure there is even a lie. The video shows 1/8 mile and is only a 5-6 second race. While it talks about 1/4 mile that takes 11 seconds.

Edit: I am not sure why people are unhappy. But if they say they can do 1/4 of a mile in a certain time and they can, it's not a lie even if they show a video of 1/8 of a mile run.

Thats so typical with anti-Tesla (and Apple) - someone comes up with some conspiracy theory. Mass media catches on without verifying it. If Elon too bothered he'll provide some proof it's bs or more nuanced than someone is saying. No one cares, because rocketman = bad.

While Tesla continues with their publicity stunts Rivian is out there actually selling trucks. I live in the US Midwest and I've seen quite a few of them on the road. I would wager I'm not going to see nearly as many Cybertrucks.

Tons of them in the Denver area. From a purely mechanical standpoint the Cybertruck actually seems pretty damn good, if they'd put a more standard SUV/truck on it it would sell, I can't imagine anyone outside of Elon bros wanting to drive this thing.

I suspect that's going to be their next move after the platform is ready.

They did the same thing with making Model 3, scaling production, and then making Model Y on top of it.

This trick is what made them the behemoth they are, in the car industry.

Want to make a statement? Beat the 911 on the Nordschleife.

So, battery overheated and car starts limping before end of first lap like previous Teslas?

I think this is pretty reasonable real world baseline for sportiness. One lap is enough, but could go for distance in hour or multiple laps for even more credit.

Exactly. Otherwise it's a lame PR stunt.

We used to bet on parking lot races of pedestrians vs. cars/motorcycles, where the distance was measured in parking spaces. Fun times. Fit pedestrians reach full speed pretty quick!

Eh, this is called “marketing”… I’d like to see how they analyze other car advertisements for their accuracy as well.

Lying isn't marketing. It's just lying.

“All marketers are liars”

A good portion of marketing is about lies that we (or other people) want to believe

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Seth-Godin/dp/1591845335 would disagree

Seth Godin can be wrong if he wants to be. It's possible to advertise without lying about your product.

It’s certainly possible, and the right thing to do.

But I have personally seen multiple times the “fake it till you make it” attitude in marketing products. I would have rather seen the other approach, but in the end it worked to get it off the ground.

Lying overlaps marketing. The pizza you get never has the density of toppings in the ads, nor the soup all the chunky bits. Your battery life doesn't match the manufacturer claims. All the fine print spells out how you can't claim that prize.

It's a spectrum with some tolerated boundaries, just like we abhor lies between people except for the ones we accept (Santa Claus to the kids, you have a beautiful smile, etc.)

But this is, again, just another Tesla Musk lie. Perhaps he was just "being sarcastic."

> Your battery life doesn't match the manufacturer claims

They are still measuring that in a defined standardized way. It might be very different from real world conditions but that doesn’t mean that they are explicitly lying.

> The pizza you get never has the density of toppings in the ads, nor the soup all the chunky bits.

In some countries (including the US, actually, I thought), regulators have started cracking down on this, though it certainly used to be the case that food photography was basically all about fraud.

Any source on that crackdown?

Becoming a bit of a trend with Tesla. One always needs to look closely for subterfuge

The trend is mass-media publishing unconfirmed hearsay.

Yes, that's how drag races work.

1/8th and 1/4th mile are standard.

If I win a 100 meters running race should I start advertising that I won a 200 meters race?

They say that it was 1/4 in the video

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