Ford Extends One Million Pound Middle Finger at Tesla

Elon Musk certainly hasn’t been kind towards Ford in the past, talking about how the Dearborn truck plant is like a morgue. It’s a bold move considering his cars are assembled outdoors in a tent, but that hasn’t stopped the Twitter man from tweeting. He even recently claimed the Tesla all-electric pickup truck will be as good as Ford’s truck but also be able to tow 300,000 pounds.

Yes, that’s a totally ridiculous number and there’s no way the truck will tow that much in the real world, under the SAE J2807 standard. That’s assuming, of course, the Tesla pickup even exists. While Musk has long teased the truck, we’ve yet to actually see it in any physical capacity. It’s easy to say (or joke) your truck can tow 300,000 pounds when it doesn’t actually exist.

Ford is also working on an all-electric pickup truck. Today the company released a video of that development process, including the vehicle towing rail cars weighing over 1 million pounds. Not only is that 700,000 pounds more than Tesla’s claim but, since it’s a real truck that really exists, we can actually see it do it.

Of course, this is a publicity stunt from Ford. In any normal world, we’d just share the video and move on with our lives. But in a world where Tesla and its CEO like to throw as much shade as they can, it’s significant Ford countered the talk with a video. Also, it confirms that Ford’s EV truck is coming along and likely to go on sale much sooner than Tesla’s offering — if the Tesla truck goes on sale at all.

No, the Ford electric pickup won’t be rated to haul 1,000,000 pounds. But electric torque means it’ll probably be able to tow quite a bit. What I’m most curious about on the Ford EV pickup is not what it’ll tow, but how much electric range there will be when attached to a trailer. That’ll be what makes or breaks the electric pickup.

300,000 lb towing capacity

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 27, 2018

[Image: Ford]