Tesla’s Claim That Cybertruck Can Pull “Near Infinite Mass” Is Hilarious Bullshit

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At this moment in time, the Tesla Cybertruck is a machine that is mostly hype. I’m not saying it’ll never actually get produced or anything like that, but I am saying that most of the general concept of what a Cybertruck is about 75% hype at the moment. Sure, there’s some plans and prototypes and massive amounts of pre-orders, but most Cybertrucks do their driving in the fevered imaginations of hardcore Tesla fans. Tesla’s own website for the Cybertruck certainly contributes to this, with plenty of specs and numbers that have yet to be verified, but there’s one claim on there that’s worth pointing out, because it’s so incredibly absurd. You know it’s good because it uses the phrase “near infinite mass.” What? What does this even mean? Let’s dig into this madness, just a bit.

I should also note I’m by no means the only one to raise an eyebrow at this; people on sites like Twitter and Reddit have noted it for years, but it only caught my eye recently. And now I can’t stop thinking about it. Here’s what it says, specifically:

RUGGED STRENGTH

With the ability to pull near infinite mass and a towing capability of over 14,000 pounds, Cybertruck can perform in almost any extreme situation with ease.

 

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So, the Cybertruck can pull “near infinite mass?” What the fuck does that even mean, “near infinite.” Infinite is, well, infinite! There’s no beginning or end, so how can anything be “near?” Five pounds is just as close to infinite pounds as 500,000 pounds is. If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to test it yourself, and try counting from 5 to infinity and then 500,000 to infinity and tell me which one gets you there quicker. I’m not going to wait up for you, though.

That idiocy aside, what do they mean, exactly, by “pull?” I suppose they’re implying that the Cybertruck can pull really, really massive things, like trains or airplanes or spaceships, but you know what? Lots of trucks can. In fact, those three specific things I mentioned have all been done by other trucks, because this is a well-known PR stunt:

Look, a train:

Look, a plane (a freaking Mini is doing this one):

Look, a spaceship:

Many, many vehicles are capable of pulling extremely heavy things slowly over flat, smooth surfaces. There’s whole classes of quite small vehicles that do just this, as a job, every day, like airport tugs.

Our very own engineer-in-cheese David Tracy even wrote about these sorts of pulling stunts a few years back, where he noted that while many vehicles can do these sorts of performative towing feats, they’re not really a useful, real-world test of anything. There’s a standard for what is, though, and it’s the SAE J2807  test that actually takes into account real-world criteria like overheating and handling and braking performance.

The sort of pull that Tesla seems to be referring to with the Cybertruck’s absurd claim must be what’s known as a drawbar pull, which is the amount of horizontal force available to a vehicle at the drawbar for accelerating or pulling a load. There’s a formula for computing it, even:

Drawbar pull = [motor torque] x [gear reduction] /[radius of drive wheel] – [rolling resistance]

I suppose once we actually know what the Cybertuck’s stats are for all these things, we could compute what its drawbar pull would be. I’m willing to bet good, damp money that it’s not going to be anywhere close to “near infinite mass,” though. So if you were planning to tow, say, Jupiter closer to your backyard because it would look awesome in the sky when you had cookouts, I think you’re out of luck.

None of this, of course, is news, because it’s just physics. What is worth noting is the language Tesla is using here, and how it’s indicative of a larger pattern. Just choosing to use the phrase “near infinite mass,” knowing that it’s inherently meaningless but was chosen because someone at Tesla thought it sounded badass or whatever should be a bit of a warning: This is a vehicle that may turn out to be more focused on perception and image than actual utility.

“Near infinite mass” is a sort of insulting phrase to use, because it treats the potential customer as a rube who gets easily dazzled by science-sounding hyperbolic words, and that’s all that whomever wrote this may care about. It crumbles almost immediately under even the most mild of scrutiny, and while all carmakers (especially for trucks) like to play up their vehicles abilities, sometimes with a bit of deliberate obfuscation, we should have some limits about what is just clearly bullshit.

And “near infinite” being used in any context describing a truck’s capabilities is very much bullshit. Unless they’re talking about the Cybertruck’s near infinite ability to provoke eye-rolling. That I’d believe.

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Mercedes Streeter

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104 thoughts on “Tesla’s Claim That Cybertruck Can Pull “Near Infinite Mass” Is Hilarious Bullshit”

  1. Tesla using stupid marketing bullshit to market something that may or may not ever actually exist for purchase? Yeah, didn’t see that coming… again..

  2. It’s worth noting (not really, but still…) that “near infinite mass” does not mean the same as “nearly infinite mass.” Clearly the claim, therefore, is that the truck is capable of pulling while in the vicinity of infinite mass. This isn’t the easiest thing to check but a simple gedankenexperiment suggests that, inasmuch as the direction of pull was unstated in the original claim, it’s at a minimum quite clear the truck can certainly pull towards such a mass, in fact probably rather quickly. Truth in advertising!

  4. I’m not sure that I’d say it’s BS. It’s just saying that the CyberTruck is so powerful that it can even give Yo Mama a ride. ????????????

  5. Reminds me of one the highest levels of praise the folks I grew up around could give when describing a vehicle’s tow capacity. Example: “Oh yeah, that’s got the 460, it’ll pull the ass out of a skunk.” It’s roughly the same level of accuracy as “near infinite mass”.

  6. Wait…so you’re telling me that a company run by a guy who’s promised tunnels that have never been built, promised robots then called a human being in a silly outfit on stage, promised a super train that doesn’t exist, and has promised an electric truck that’s been delayed ad nauseam and essentially only exists in the imagination of redditors, might be full of shit?

    Sheesh. That sounds like something a con man would do. We’re talking about the infallible brain genius Elon Musk here! Surely he wouldn’t just lie about shit online to enrich himself. Come on!

  7. Clearly the unavailability of a hitch that assembles near infinite mass to attach it to the Cybertruck is not Teslas fault.

    If you were a big brain like Musk, you’d know that in the future we’ll deploy an infinite net to the forward edge of the ever expanding universe, run its cabling through a series of blocks to gain mechanical advantage, then drive the Cybertruck into a black hole, which will continually gain mass until it re-compresses the universe to a singularity, which will launch a new big bang.

    Musk is just being modest by not noting that Cybertrucks are the cause of and destructors of the universe.

  8. “So if you were planning to tow, say, Jupiter closer to your backyard because it would look awesome in the sky when you had cookouts, I think you’re out of luck.”

    Damn. There goes my summer barbecue plans for 2035.

  11. The mass of a body is the amount of matter contained within it, while the weight of a body is the force acting on it due to acceleration due to gravity.

  13. That drawbar pull formula seems to assume absolute traction. I mean, a big ol’ diesel dually can pull a house after it’s been jacked up onto what they use as dollys, but it likely won’t do much except spin tires if the house is still on its foundation.

    And, thank you for putting Klaatu in my head with the Uranus ref: I’ll be hearing that all day

    1. Well, yes. All formulas of this sort do. If you want a real world number, you need an observed figure. That will be different every time you perform the observation, making fair comparison difficult.

  14. They should get Tyler Hoover (aka Hoovie, of Hoovie’s Garage) to verify this.

    After all, he has the best Youtube channel for towing tests, EV and otherwise.

  17. I think automakers are using confusion/excitement over new, shiny EVs to publish extremely misleading specs. Anyone else remember when the Hummer had 11,500 lb-ft of torque? [at the wheels, after gear reductions]

      1. My truck isn’t even diesel, but puts ~20,000 lb-ft to the wheels in 4 LO

        430 torque at the crank * 3.97 1st gear * 4.30 rear diff * 2.72 low range = 19,966

        1. Yep just calculated that my Touareg is 15.5k. I bet a modern diesel truck can probably do more wheel torque than the Hummer in 4hi.

          V8 Touareg:
          4.2 1st x 4.56 axle x 2.66 low range x 300 tq

          This is why I don’t think quad motors are a very good off road solution. With lockers you can put all of that torque to whatever wheel you want but with 1 motor per wheel the max you can do is 1/4 of the total.

  20. Lie, lie, lie. Lie, lie, lie. Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. Oh, sorry, just practicing some Simon and Garfunkel.

  21. Until Tesla demonstrates that the Cybertruck can pull a 4-bottom John Deere plow like the 1977 Chevy K20 ad, I’m not interested. Dammit, better do a Nebraska Tractor Test while you’re at it.

    1. Came to say this. The 1947 Nebraska Tractor Test conducted on a Farmall Cub (8-9HP) recorded a maximum drawbar pull force of 1596# and a fuel consumption around .8 gallons/hr. With a 7.5 gallon fuel tank, the little Farmall Cub could perform this feat for roughly 9 hours and 45 minutes straight before refueling.

      Could a Tesla Cyber Truck drag something that put a constant load of 1600# rearward on the truck for 9 hours and 45 minutes straight? Inquiring minds want to know.

    2. I wonder how the K20 had the traction to pull a 4 bottom plow. They must have really weighed it down. I also love how the Nebraska Tractor Test came up in conversation. Only here…

    3. Seriously,we should let Musk know about nebraska tests. I bet he would be all in!
      What a laugh that would be.
      Even funnier ,i’d bet some teslarati would then try to use them as actual tractors.

    1. That is exactly the sort of stunt Elon Musk would be overly proud of. Hell, I could see him buying some land in Massachusetts, calling it Infinite, Mass, then doing some towing test nearby in hopes someone will find it more clever than his sink.

  23. “Near infinite mass” is a sort of insulting phrase to use, because it treats the potential customer as a rube who gets easily dazzled by science-sounding hyperbolic words

    Sounds like most Tesla-stans I’ve met. The normal ones are alright, but the others… you know who I’m talking about.

    1. I also have a feeling that the more normal Tesla owners largely aren’t interested in the Cybertruck either. The whole truck and marketing behind it seems like it’s 100% catered to “those” Tesla fans.

  24. Man, you’d think this would be the sort of thing Tesla’s PR department would fact check before release

    Oh, wait, they don’t have one, because reason

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