How does he get away with it?
The simple answer is . . . the press lets him. Over and over and over again. Ludicrous claims that ought to trigger the raising of hands – if not questions about his sanity – are stenographed onto laptops and formatted into copy and clicked and sent all over the Internet as imminent, given, factual.
There will be space tourism to Mars by 2022; fleets of electrified long-haul big-rigs that don’t have to stop every 20 miles or so for recharge pit stops. A new supercar that doesn’t exist – but send me a huge check.
Remember Yul Brynner in The Ten Commandments?
So let it be written, so let it be done. Except pharaoh kept his promises.
Elon promises an electric pick-up truck that will tow 300,000 pounds.
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For the record, this is roughly the weight of the statue of liberty.
And considerably more than the maximum tow-rating of the Ford F150 (13,200 lbs.) which has the highest tow-rating of any half-ton truck on the market and is the truck Elon says his truck will be “better than.”
It would take probably every F-150 Ford made last year to pull 300,000 lbs. – but Elon Musk has promised his pending electric half-ton truck will pull that load all by itself.
And no one laughed.
Even if you took a zero off his claim about the electric truck’s pulling power, the claim would still be ludicrous – and regardless of the mighty torque produced by electric motors, which isn’t a ludicrous claim. It is why EVs like the Model S are very quick – even if they can’t travel very far and take very long to travel again.
Because towing power is also a function of the capability of the vehicle’s frame and attachment points to handle the strain – something Elon would know if Elon knew anything about trucks. The same goes for the stenographers who “cover” what Elon has to say about trucks.
Even if the electric pick-up he says he’s developing (no one’s actually seen it and anyone who takes Musk at his word about anything is deserving of everything Elon gives him, or rather takes from him) has a mighty electric motor that develops let us say 1,500 ft.-lbs. of torque, which would about three times the torque of the strongest IC engine available in a current half-ton pickup, unless the truck’s frame can handle the torsional and other stresses, the power of the drivetrain – electric or IC – becomes functionally meaningless after a certain point.
