The innovativeness of the Tesla Model S had nothing to do with technology. Since around the time Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, most of us have been carrying around lithium-ion batteries everywhere we go. Putting them in a car? Not a huge leap. Benjamin Franklin contemplated electric motors way back in the 1740s. The first car Ferdinand Porsche designed, in 1900, was an electric-gas hybrid. Electrics held all the earliest land-speed records. There was nothing new about the Tesla Model S except that . . . people wanted it. And since it went on sale in 2012, Tesla has built the world’s best charging network around it. Some cars are classics because they’re brilliant and sold in tiny numbers. The Tesla Model S is already a classic because it has sold well and changed the world.
Then there’s the new Model S Plaid. It’s nuts.
This story originally appeared in Volume 8 of Road & Track.
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Elon Musk often speaks in exaggerations. “Tesla cannot die,” he told Kara Swisher of Vox’s Recode back in 2018. “Tesla is incredibly important for the future of sustainable transport and energy generation. . . . The fundamental good that Tesla provides is accelerating the advent of sustainable transport and energy production.” Hyperbole and truth can coexist in one boast.
What Tesla figured out, even before Musk became chairman in 2004, was that for an electric car to succeed, it had to be something other than a reimagined econo–penalty box. The market has treated the Nissan Leaf, the Fiat 500e, the Volkswagen eGolf, and a dozen other small electrics largely with disdain. Few people, it seems, want to pay about $40,000 for a vehicle that looks like the first car you buy after graduating from UC Irvine. Instead, the Model S took the form of a five-seat luxury sedan. And that made the Model S an icon of both environmental virtue and conspicuous prosperity—which, it turns out, is a stunningly effective marketing combination.
The Plaid marks an almost complete break with Musk’s original mission for the Model S. Back in the spring of 2009, when the public first saw the Model S prototype, it was positioned as a BMW 5-series or Mercedes E-class competitor. The base configuration then was a single electric motor rated at 300 kW. That’s a bit more than 402 hp. Powerful, but not overwhelming. And if you factored in a projected $7500 government rebate, the base price would be $49,900. Not a cheap car, but nowhere near a very expensive one. And that was just about half of what Tesla was then charging for its two-seat, Lotus-based Roadster.
“The Roadster hurts us in Washington,” Musk was reported by the New Yorker to have said before a 2009 coming-out party for the Model S. “We don’t want to give the sense that this is about toys for rich people.”
The Plaid is a toy for rich people.
The motor count on the Model S Plaid is now three. And together, while computer-configured for ultimate ludicrousness, Tesla rates them at a combined 1020 hp. Tesla’s performance claims include a 1.9-second 0–60 time, a 9.2-second quarter-mile at 155 mph, and an even 200-mph top speed. Astonishing for any car, but particularly so for a sled that weighs about 4800 pounds. Oh, and the base price is now $131,190 before accounting for government inducements. Call it $130,440 if you live in California, or maybe $129,690. Your state’s, county’s, municipality’s, utility’s, and moment’s bribery can and will vary.
When the first Model S finally went on sale as a 2013 model, the Signature Performance version carried a single 416-hp motor that was capable of launching the 4785-pound car to 60 mph in 4.6 seconds. Its top speed was governed to 134 mph. The base Model S went on sale at the price Musk promised. But practically no one bought the stripper. Signature Performance models could easily break the $100,000 barrier.
The Plaid is not the car Musk was promising in 2009. It’s not even really the car that went on sale in 2013. It’s so much more. And so much more money.
Tesla has a tempestuous relationship with the automotive press and rarely makes its vehicles available for evaluation. So R&T rented one through Turo for three days at about $500 a day.
Twelve years after its first appearance, the Model S still has presence. Even in Southern California, where it’s at least as common as Range Rovers and Botox, it’s still somehow special and handsome with an aggressive countenance. It’s a badass with a socially conscious halo.
Sitting on graphite-colored wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires, the Plaid is firmly grounded. The word “Plaid” in small letters on the tail is the only hint that this is not merely another status symbol. Tesla has been deservedly criticized for its assembly quality, and this example has one fairly egregious window-trim misalignment. But after nearly 10 years of production, the company is definitely better at screwing together its brutes.
Besides the introduction of the Plaid model, the big evolution for the Model S during 2021 has been a new interior. And the most apparent change is the adoption of a steering yoke in place of the steering wheel. The yoke is a joke, the sort of silly change for change’s sake that gets dreamed up after many bong hits and Knight Rider marathons. It’s apparent from the first time merely pulling into traffic that the yoke impedes vehicle control.
A Formula 1 car can work fine with a yoke because the steering is freakishly quick, less than one turn lock-to-lock. But road-car steering must be slow enough to function in daily use, and as radical as the Plaid is, it’s still streetbound. At low speeds, that means reaching for a top loop that isn’t there. Parking becomes a daunting steering challenge. It’s a needless distraction.
Beyond that, Tesla has redesigned most of the car’s basic controls. The Model S steering column, including the turn-signal and shifter stalks, came out of a Mercedes C-class. Now the turn signals are operated by buttons on the yoke that are counterintuitive to operate and a bitch to find when your hands are crossed up making a turn. And shifting from forward to reverse now means using the ginormous 17-inch center touchscreen. That’s ridiculous.
With all of that in mind, the new interior is a big step up in elegance and quality. The seats are great, and although that signature center screen is still tasked with too many functions, they all work well. Tesla’s reluctance to include separate controls for various items is even more frustrating than Porsche’s determination to use a separate button for everything. In at least this small way, something like the Kia K5 strikes a better balance than either.
All of those concerns vanish as the Plaid finds a road where it can open up. The 0–60 time is a standard reference, but it’s the acceleration from, say, 50 to 120 mph that’s breathtaking. And that’s not some Muskian hyperbole; the torque strangulation is so intense that autonomic respiration becomes impossible. You have to remember to breathe.
With batteries lining its floor, the Model S carries its weight low, and that helps with flat cornering. Steering feel at speed is excellent. The brakes could stop the entropic dissolution of the universe, and the ride quality is firm. Of course it’s quiet. It is, after all, an electric car.
Tesla has pared the 2022 Model S down to two models: The $89,900 Long Range puts out 670 hp and has a claimed 405 mile range; the Plaid will supposedly go 396 miles between charges. Yeah, there’s no way anyone driving the Plaid will go that far without giddily indulging in some battery draining wackiness. Taking the Plaid out of its most ripping mode is blanching the flavor out of the fruit.
Lunacy, though, isn’t why the Model S matters. The importance lies in the notion that the Model S has validated electric vehicles in the minds of millions, only a tiny fraction of whom can afford one. The Model S is the first electric car in more than a century to capture the imagination of people who have never cared about electric cars before. It’s an object of desire. That makes it, so far, the most important car of the 21st century and the most likely harbinger of the future.
Specifications
2022 Tesla Model S Plaid
Price:
$131,190 (base)
Motors:
3 electric motors
Output:
1020 hp
1050 lb-ft
Transmission:
Direct drive
Curb Weight:
4766 lb
0-60 mph:
1.9 seconds
Prophecy Fulfilled
Martin Eberhard, co-founder of Tesla Motors, talks about looking ahead.
By Elana Scherr
The skill of prophecy is not in having the vision, but in interpreting it. Martin Eberhard didn’t see the future in one blinding insight. But in the early Aughts, he recognized its direction—in the rechargeable cells of e-book batteries, in complex calculations on energy efficiency, and in wealthy neighbors’ driveways, where sports cars sat side by side with trendy Toyota hybrids. The cards and bones and tea leaves all said, “The future is electric.”
It was 2003. Eberhard was an entrepreneurial engineer and saw possibility in the auto industry’s recently abandoned attempts at electric vehicles. “I wasn’t an electric-car enthusiast,” he says. “I wasn’t even a car enthusiast. I was just interested in finding out what was going to follow fossil fuels.” He dove into research on alternative fuels and came away convinced that electricity alone was the cleanest, quickest way to power transport.
“I’m enough of an engineer to believe that the most efficient path will be the one that ultimately wins. But why did all the previous electric cars fail?” The answer, Eberhard believed, was that every attempt at an EV had been aimed at the entry-level mass market. “When a new technology comes along, whatever it might be, it never comes in at the low end and tries to compete on price. People wanted to save the world and make electric cars everybody could afford, but that’s just not the way products work.” Instead of trying to make a cheap EV, Eberhard decided to concentrate on an EV that would beat gasoline cars on performance.
Eberhard would be out at Tesla before the Ludicrous modes and sub-two-second 0–60 times, but the idea that an electric car could be fast and stylish changed the whole auto industry. Eberhard, however, doesn’t think that building a high-performance electric car before anyone else is proof of any prophetic ability.
Where Eberhard does acknowledge foresight is in how Tesla chose to power its first car. Free from the limitations of affordability, Eberhard was able to look at technologies that hadn’t been used in production cars before—most notably, the lithium-ion battery, which Eberhard knew from his experience with e-book development. “People from the auto industry told me lithium-ion batteries would never be used in cars. They were just too hard to control and too dangerous,” he says. Eberhard had faith in the batteries, but he was also practical. “I could’ve tried to invent my own battery. It would’ve been insane. I would’ve never got it working in time,” he says.
These days, Eberhard works as an advisor to start-ups working on energy creation and storage. “Right now we make our electricity mostly with fossil fuels, but an EV doesn’t care where the power comes from. We’ll see new options in the next 10 to 20 years.” In the meantime, does he believe he accurately saw the future in 2003? “Of course. We knew it when we were doing it. Name a major car company anywhere in the world today that is not making EVs."
John Pearley Huffman has been writing about cars since 1990 and is getting okay at it. Besides Car and Driver, his work has appeared in the New York Times and more than 100 automotive publications and websites. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara, he still lives near that campus with his wife and two children. He owns a pair of Toyota Tundras and two Siberian huskies. He used to have a Nova and a Camaro.
