This Gas Truck Owner Switched To A Tesla Cybertruck For Towing. The Savings Are Huge

We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars in gas savings per year.

Tesla Cybertruck

Photo by: InsideEVs

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Aug 19, 2024 at 5:24am ET

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A Missouri contractor switched from a Ram pickup to a Tesla Cybertruck to tow a roughly 6,300-pound trailer for work.
Thanks to meager off-peak electricity rates, the Cybertruck is cheaper to own despite its range being impacted by the trailer.

A contractor in Missouri who said he switched from a gas-powered pickup to a Tesla Cybertruck to tow a roughly 6,300-pound trailer for his construction company claims the electric vehicle is saving him a lot of gas money.

Dan Burke published several posts on his personal X account where he did the math and found that even though the Cybertruck isn’t particularly energy-efficient when towing big loads, the fact that electricity is much cheaper than gasoline where he lives makes it a very good buy for his use case.

Furthermore, the fact that Tesla’s pickup has outlets that can be used to power tools on the job site without having to use long extension cords or lugging around a loud gas generator is a welcomed bonus, according to the owner.

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Burke said that he used to drive a Ram truck that averaged around 9 mpg when towing the black trailer you can see in the photos below. At $3.95/gallon and an average daily drive of 160 miles, he used to pay around $70 every day on gas alone.

After switching to the Cybertruck–which, by the way, is far from being an efficiency king when towing–his savings amount to tens of thousands of dollars per year. Burke said that doing the same trips with the electric pickup led to an average energy consumption of 675 watt-hours/mile when staying off the highway, while higher driving speeds increased the consumption to 875 Wh/mile.

The Cybertruck would need 140 kWh of energy to drive 160 miles on the highway, according to Burke’s consumption figures. But with an off-peak rate of just 4.5 cents/kWh, the cost to fill up the battery would be just $6.3–$63.7 less than with the gas-powered Ram truck. When staying off the highway, where the efficiency is higher, the Cybertruck would need 108 kWh of energy for 160 miles, resulting in an energy cost of just $4.86.

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If the electric truck were used in the same conditions for 260 days–the average number of working days in a year– the gas savings would be between $16,936 and $16,562. This means a $100,000 all-wheel drive Foundation Series Cybertruck would pay for itself in roughly six years in gas savings alone.

Mind you, this use case doesn’t fit everyone, but it’s interesting to see how a battery-powered truck can drastically reduce costs and make work easier. But what’s your take on this? Let us know in the comments below.

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