Essentially, it all boils down to the loading that gets applied. We "think" and intuitively "feel" like towing is a VERY strenuous activity, but when you start examining the strength of the joints and really get into the active loads, it's not nearly as large as you would expect.
For instance, lets take a 10k lb trailer. How much force would you think gets applied during acceleration? 10k? 20k? 5k? The truth of the matter is that even the fastest, hardest accelerating trucks, barely pull 1G on "launch", so that "pull" force is barely 10klbs. Aside from some really serious abuse, you'll be hard pressed to generate 7.5k of pull force. So the loading, in general, is much lower than most anticipate.
From there we can look at things like strengths of materials, bolting patterns, and other mechanical properties. What I found was that most of these are designed with dynamic safety factors well into 7-10 range. This means that they are designed to not just "not fail", but to "not deform" at 7-10 times the "rated" loads. This is "life safety" device territory, like you would find for lifting lugs on harnesses and such. This, somewhat holds true in it taking almost 11k lbs to pull the rear hitch off the cybertruk, when pulled straight down. It's rated for like 1.1k lbs of tongue weight I think, and 11k lbs of down force is the equivalent of a 10G of force on the hitch, or a safety factor of 10. So, you can see it's a little disengenuis to claim that hitch will fail with a 11k lb trailer. That load case would require some significant abuse to reach.
Now, in your particular case, something like a drop hitch doesn't really change the magnitude of the load, but rather the dimensions at which it's applied. This will "eat into" that safety factor, but what you have to look at is the total change from stock to new position. For instance, lets say you normally run a 0in drop, and you're new trailer of the same weight requires a 6in drop. The important measurement is how much the change is from the old to the new in reference to where the hitch bolts to the frame. If it's already 9in above the 0in ball, you've increased it to 15in with the drop hitch, or less than a 2x magnification of supported moment. If you already have a 7x safety factor, you now have a 5x safety factor. So the risk of failure (and most peoples experience supports this) is pretty low.
We can also talk materials. The choice of a cast aluminum on the Cybertruk is an interesting one. There are some downsides, like the fact that it's brittle and not ductile (little to no warning before failure), it doesn't have a fatigue life (this really only matters if you are stressing it to measurable deformation levels), and it's not exceptionally well suited for impacts (see ductility issues above). HOWEVER, all those bad things are offset with some good things like considerably more robust geometry from the casting process, higher safety factor deployed in design, and lightness for the larger percentage of time you're NOT towing. I see how Tesla got where they are, and I totally see the misunderstanding from JQPublic; especially in a VERY VERY conservative group of people like those of us that tow regularly. Had a guy tell me on reddit the other day that I needed a 2500 to tow 7k lbs regularly, these people exist in high numbers in the towing community, and they're just chocked full of these old adages, misunderstandings, and general "My experience dictates I'm right" mentalities.
Let me know if I answered your question. I can talk about this crap for hours, and tend to ramble some.
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. I’m glad I only have 48k miles on my 2020 Ram 1500, as there is no truck on the market I would currently trade it for.
