Cybertruck and Model S sit at opposite ends of Tesla’s lineup — one’s a work-and-adventure truck, the other’s a flagship sedan. They rarely compete for the same buyer, but if a truck bed and a trunk are both genuinely on your list, here’s what actually separates them.
Price and range
Cybertruck starts at $71,985 for the Dual Motor AWD, moves to $81,985 for Premium AWD, and tops out at $101,985 for the Cyberbeast — all EPA-rated around 320 to 325 miles of range. Model S starts higher, at $86,630 for the standard All-Wheel Drive trim and $101,630 for Plaid, but it goes farther on a charge: 410 miles for the base trim, 368 for Plaid. If range per dollar matters most to you, Model S wins; if you want a five-figure-lower entry price, Cybertruck does.
Speed and towing
Model S is the quicker car in a straight line — 3.1 seconds to 60 mph for the standard AWD trim, 1.99 seconds for Plaid, per Kelley Blue Book. Cybertruck’s Dual Motor and Premium trims run 4.1 seconds, and the Cyberbeast drops to 2.6 seconds. But towing is where the comparison stops being close: Cybertruck tows up to 7,500 pounds on the base trim and 11,000 pounds on Premium and Cyberbeast, according to Cars.com’s spec sheet. Model S isn’t built or rated for towing at all.
What you actually get to carry
Both seat five. Model S is a liftback sedan with roughly 25 cubic feet of trunk space — expanding to about 61 cubic feet with the rear seats folded — plus a small frunk, per Kelley Blue Book. Cybertruck has an open composite bed rated for up to 2,500 pounds of payload, which is a fundamentally different kind of cargo space: better for tools, gear, or a weekend load than for groceries and luggage you want to keep out of the weather, unless you add the optional tonneau cover.
The actual decision
If your list includes hauling a trailer, carrying dirty gear, or wanting the higher ground clearance and steer-by-wire feel of a truck, Cybertruck is the only one of the two built for that. If you want the fastest, longest-range, most conventional daily driver Tesla sells, with real trunk space you don’t have to think about protecting from rain, Model S is the better fit. Comparing them on paper is mostly useful for confirming which category you actually need — most buyers cross-shopping Tesla end up choosing based on that, not on 0-60 times.
Photo by Impact Dog Crates.