Final answer:
The question pertains to calculating the tension in a towing cable based on Newton's second law of motion, which requires knowing the acceleration of the towed car. As the acceleration value is missing, we can only state the formula T = m * a, where T is the tension, m is the mass of the car, and a is the acceleration.
Step-by-step explanation:
We are dealing with a physics problem related to the concept of Newton's second law of motion which states that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass. Given a truck of mass 2.01 x 103 kg that is towing a car of mass 680 kg, we need to find the tension in the towing cable when the car is accelerating at a certain rate. According to Newton's second law (F = m * a), we can calculate the tension (T) in the cable as the force necessary to accelerate the car at the given acceleration. However, since the acceleration rate is missing in the provided data, let's consider a hypothetical acceleration a. Therefore, the tension T in the cable would equal the product of the mass of the car (mcar) and the acceleration (a), which can be represented as T = mcar * a.