For all the Tesla fans watching the company's "Battery Day" presentation and hoping the talk wouldn't focus solely on the gritty details of anodes, cathodes, and lithium mining, Elon Musk provided. Nearing the end of his formal presentation (before a lengthy Q&A, with questions coming from attendees sitting in a parking lot full of Teslas), the CEO threw out the classic "one more thing" — the Model S Plaid.
As in, a new version of the Model S that will go from zero to 60 mph in under two seconds, reach a top speed of 200 mph, and cover more than 520 miles between charging pit stops. The three-motor, all-wheel-drive take on the sedan — the first version of which debuted in 2012 — will produce more than 1,100 horsepower, enough to run the quarter-mile in under nine seconds. It starts at $134,490, and will hit the market at the end of 2021, Musk said. Orders are open.
The "Plaid" moniker, for the uninitiated, is a reference to the Mel Brooks movie "Spaceballs."
Even for a company that has long used the instant torque of electric motors to smash customers into seat backs, these are impressive specs. And to top it all off, Musk showed clips from a recent run at the WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca track in Northern California, where, he said, the Plaid clocked a 90-second lap time that, if verified, would be one of the fastest ever driven.
And Musk, never one to settle for the simple boast, piled on: "We think probably there's another 3 seconds or more to take off that time," he said. "We're confident that the Model S Plaid will achieve the best track time of any production vehicle ever. Of any kind, two door or otherwise."
Come the end of next year, we'll see whether he's right.
