Ford Challenges Tesla to a Truck Tug of War
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Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk plainly says his pickup is a “better truck than an F-150.” Ford Motor Co. 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 pickup in a tug-of-war against Ford’s best-selling F-150. He tweeted a clip of the test Nov. 24 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
Ford thinks Musk was making an apples-to-oranges comparison. The video the Tesla CEO tweeted appears to show a two-wheel drive version of the F-150 against an all-wheel drive Cybertruck. Other details that could have factored in which pickup won out include curb weight and tire type.
Sundeep Madra, vice president of Ford X, the automaker’s unit for developing new business models, challenged Musk on Nov. 25 to send Ford a Cybertruck. He linked to a post by the car-enthusiast site motor1.com that questioned whether Tesla’s test was “fair game.”
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.
Dana Hull contributed to this report.
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