2021 Tesla Model S Plaid Acceleration Review | Too Fast For Its Own Good

Tesla. There aren't too many performance cars that can go toe to toe with them in a straight line, especially not when you consider the price range that they compete in. But in many cases, though, they were fast, they weren't without their flaws. But this one's a little different because this one here is taking it to a whole new level. You know, Teslas are definitely a love hate kind of thing for me. On one hand it offers obscene performance for the price, well, not even just price obscene performance period. But on the other, even though I've gone over the soullessness of the powertrain, I just think it looks mundane and you basically blend into a sea of EVs on the road because every Model S looks the same. I wish they did something to make this more special, more aggressive, more ridiculous. Either way, let's see what this thing is all about. This is the 2021 Tesla Model S Plaid. I'm not sure why the word plaid has such a high place in the pantheon, but I think I can get used to the silly naming schemes. After all, when you have the equivalent of over 1000 horsepower, you can call your car whatever the hell you want. Speaking of which, it also has over 1,000 pounds of torque, but it doesn't stop there. The interior is refreshed, steering wheel is now a yoke, and it's fitting because you're basically driving a land bound rocket ship. Like I said earlier, there's not much to distinguish it from the other trims. So if you're trying to be low key, this is probably the way. Frankly, the Model S is in dire need of a makeover. It's been the same for almost 10 years and it's definitely starting to show some age. But what about a cold start and revs? Of course not. Don't be silly, Dan. There's barely any noises coming out of this car. Even the Taycan has a little bit more of an electric world to it. The cool thing is that the performance sequence is now called Cheetah mode and the car squats when you engage it for a launch. It also takes less than five minutes to be ready to race, rather than the 15 and the P100D. Anyway, let's get onto the Runway to see what kind of real world numbers we can get. The P100D was an impressive car to begin with, so let's try this again with one of those to see the difference. To make it interesting, we'll give him the jump too. Let's quickly take a look at some of the performance data we got from the runs, keep in mind that this isn't a prep drag strip in that we had roughly 60% charge. Even though they say battery life doesn't matter, we observed a minor drop in performance as we ran under 50%. But regardless, it's still the fastest car we've tested so far in almost every category, starting with our in House 4100, which is for slow cars. It was comical. At 3.29 seconds it will obliterate anything from a normal driving speed. Even the McLaren 720s has nothing on the plaid. But even in the 60130 range where Teslas used to get walked, it dusted everything by putting down a crazy 5.04 second time. I'm sure that if you had an almost full charge with a slight downhill slope, you could be four seconds easily. The only time it hit a wall was roughly around 150, where a 720s would have the chance to catch up to it. Anyway, for more data on this car or any car that we've tested, check out the fastest link in the description below.

So the Plaid is stupid fast. There's no doubt about that. It was actually so fast that we couldn't officially complete the half mile. But even though we broke around three quarters of the way through, it still crossed the line at 15.46 and hit over 161 miles per hour with around 300ft left to spare. So if we had more Runway to slow it down, it probably would have nailed at least 165. And unlike the P100D, there isn't a dramatic power loss as you drain the battery down. But here's the problem. Power is a double edged sword because the Plaid is just too goddamn fast for its own good. It can hit 160 so quickly that you don't even have enough brakes to slow it down at those kind of speeds. And frankly, because of the curb weight, it fades very dramatically after a few runs at those kind of velocities. And it's a little unsafe. Anyway, as fast as the Plaid is, and as much as I like the interior refresh, they really need to update the exterior of the car. It looks exactly the same as every other Model S for the past decade, and that's what I hate about Teslas. But what can you do? No one else took the EV game seriously until now, and the Plaid is just so far ahead that it's hard for Porsche to even catch up. Anyway, that's going to do it for me on this episode, and as always, I'll catch you all on the next one.

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