Tesla Model X Tows Really, Really Big Airplane!
Tesla tweeted a video a few days ago of a Tesla Model X towing an airplane. “Big deal,” I hear you say. “Probably a Piper Cub or something.” Actually, no. Something a trifle larger. A Boeing 787 Dreamliner, in fact — an aircraft that can weigh up to 975,000 pounds at takeoff!
Wait for it pic.twitter.com/mR13wIIu1r
— Tesla (@Tesla) May 15, 2018
That’s the main story — a Tesla Model X is capable of towing just about anything that may be lying around your house, whether or not it’s on wheels.
The side story is the tweets that followed. Some people were underwhelmed by the achievement, including a Twitter user named Frances.
At low speed even a human can pull it pic.twitter.com/8JIRNL7vO5
— Francis (@PHosterFrancis) May 15, 2018
Well, that lit the fuse, so to speak. Others were soon weighing in with other fantastic feats of heavy haulage from the annals of history. There was this 1972 Chevy pickemup towing a 747:
And a Volkswagen Touareg with a 10 cylinder diesel engine having its way with a jumbo jet:
All of those completely off-topic submissions riled a Twitter user by the name of Andrew.
https://twitter.com/AJYTweets/status/996298806210641920
Andrew is correct, of course. The point of all this is not to parse the coefficient of friction of the tires on a jumbo jet or even to compare the strength of a human to that of an internal combustion engine. The point is to show that if a production car with a pair of electric motors can trundle down the tarmac with a half-million-pound load behind, it can probably handle any task you need doing.
People are still skeptical of electric vehicles and many have never experienced the immense torque an electric motor has on tap. This demonstration is intended to dispel any of those misconceptions.
Personally, I was very much impressed with Andrew’s graphic. I have stored it away for future use, believing it will come in handy for some of the debates that happen frequently here on CleanTechnica.
Addendum: The Tesla Model X has also been known to tow semi trucks stuck in the snow and approximately 250,000 pounds of muck rail cars out of a tunnel.
Tesla Model X Tows Semi Truck
No real surface is perfect, but it did pull about 250,000 lbs of muck rail cars out of a tunnel pic.twitter.com/wlKbLwd0f7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2018
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Latest CleanTechnica.TV Video
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
