Transportation

A company hacked into a Tesla Model S Plaid to hit a record 216 miles per hour

Tesla Model S Plaid sedan
Tesla Model S Plaid. Tesla
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A Tesla Model S Plaid hit its fastest speed on record Thursday after a software company hacked into the vehicle's software restrictions.

Guillaume André, the CEO of Ingenext, took his Model S Plaid out for a spin at the Trois-Rivières airport in Québec, Canada on Thursday morning. André was able to get the vehicle up to a top speed of 216 miles per hour, Electrek reported.

A spokesperson from Ingenext did not respond to a request for comment from Insider ahead of publication.

The Ingenext CEO posted a short clip of the run on his personal Facebook account, confirming that the vehicle hit 216 miles per hour.

The nearly $130,000 Tesla model has not previously been reported to have run faster than 200 miles per hour. Though, Ingenext has attempted to hit 200 miles per hour in previous tests, the publication said. Electrek reported that the Quebec track had a longer 1.8 mile runway which helped the car hit the new top speed.

The EV publication posted a video from the track on YouTube that showed the 216 miles per hour run from both inside and outside the four-door sedan. As the vehicle neared 200 miles per hour the speedometer on the car's dashboard turned red.

Electrek reporter Fred Lambert compared the sound of the vehicle racing down the runway to a "jet taking off" and recorded the sound of the Tesla's cooling system attempting to cool off the motors and battery pack after the run. 

André is not the first company to test the limits of the Model S Plaid. Last summer, Brooks Weisblat, the host of DragTimes, tested the vehicle in a series of videos by racing the Tesla against a Porsche Taycan Turbo S, as well as testing out its top speed at low battery levels.

MotorTrend said in 2021 that the Model S Plaid hit the highest 0 to 60 acceleration speed the publication has ever seen from a production car. 

When Tesla initially announced the vehicle they said it would be able to hit a top speed of 200 miles per hour, but upon release the vehicle was shown to have a speed limited to about 163 miles per hour. In January, Tesla released Track Mode for the Plaid which allowed the vehicle to go slightly faster.

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Grace Kay
Grace Kay was a Correspondent on Business Insider’s enterprise desk, where she covered the inner workings of Tesla, Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, and the broader robotics and electric vehicle industries.Her stories have been cited by multiple publications, including Reuters, Bloomberg, and CNBC. Before joining Business Insider, she worked at Bloomberg and Forbes.Tesla: Inside 'Project Rodeo,' the Tesla effort pushing the limits of self-driving technologyInternal Tesla salary database shows Elon Musk's strategy: Lower salaries, bigger stock grantsTesla tells staff it plans to roll out its Robotaxi service in San Francisco this weekendTesla has been working on modified Model Ys for its Robotaxi programTesla prioritizes Musk's and other 'VIP' drivers' data to train self-driving softwareAshok Elluswamy is the most powerful Tesla executive you've never heard ofxAI:Internal documents reveal how Elon Musk's xAI trains Grok to be the anti-woke chatbotXAI's Macrohard project stalls as Tesla ramps up a similar AI agent effortElon Musk's xAI plans to supply computing power to coding startup CursorWar rooms, group chats, and video games: Inside Elon Musk's AI startupBehind Grok's 'sexy' settings, workers review explicit and disturbing contentElon Musk's xAI lays off hundreds of workers tasked with training GrokEVs and robots:Fisker employees are fixing some customers' cars with parts from the company's vehicle 'graveyard,' sources sayFisker Ocean reservation cancellations top 40,000 as the EV company tries to fight off bankruptcy, leaked data showsInside the downfall of Henrik Fisker's second automotive startup, which just filed for bankruptcyInside the glass-walled Tesla lab where workers train the Optimus robot to act like a humanInside OpenAI's renewed push into robotics