The folks over at Unplugged Performance have been testing a Tesla Model S Plaid at the WeatherTech Laguna Seca Raceway. Randy Pobst got his first taste of the newest Tesla vehicle’s “practically alien technology,” and as Tesla’s Chief Designer, Franz von Holzhausen, poetically stated, it’s melting ICE. As in, internal combustion engines.
Melting ICE https://t.co/mYtjvwhGwE
— Franz von Holzhausen (@woodhaus2) June 16, 2021
Practically Alien Engineering
Elon described the engineering as “practically alien” at the reveal event, and I yelled, jokingly, that you could catch a UFO with it. All jokes aside, let’s dive into the engineering.
Engineering that’s practically alien
Me : “You can catch a UFO with it”@elonmusk “haha yes” pic.twitter.com/DvJF9iBwGR
— Johnna Crider (@JohnnaCrider1) June 11, 2021
Aside from what you typically think about when you think about a car’s performance, the infotainment performance of the vehicle is that of a Playstation 5. During the Plaid Model S delivery event, Elon Musk said that he didn’t think there has ever been a car with computing technology and state-of-the-art infotainment like the new Model S and Model X have.
“This is literally at the level of a Playstation 5.” He added that if you think about the future, when the car is often in either Autopilot or Full Self-Driving mode, entertainment will become “increasingly important.”
“You’re going to want to watch movies, play games, use the internet — things you want to do if you’re not driving. And this is an actual Playstation 5 level performance.” He also added after the gaming demo that a high frame rate will do 60 frames per second with state-of-the-art games.
Frame rates higher than 30 frames per second are mostly used for creating slow-motion videos or to record video game footage. Many smartphones are capable of recording at 60 frames per second, but the Tesla Model S Plaid is the first car to run games at the high frame rate of 60 frames per second. But let’s get back to the matter of traditional automobile performance. …
Elon noted that it is “the safest car in the world and the fastest,” and then showed the power curve, which illustrates just how different the Plaid version of the Tesla Model S is compared to other variants of its Model S.
“It maintains a thousand horsepower all the way up to 200 miles an hour,” Elon said.
Unplugged Performance’s Test
In the first video posted by Unplugged Performance, they shared that they wanted to give their legendary racing driver, Randy Pobst, his first experience with Tesla’s new vehicle. Pobst, who owns a McLaren P1, said that he felt like he was standing still as the Tesla Plaid passed him.
The video above is from the point of view of the driver and it beautifully demonstrates the performance of Tesla’s technology in a racing environment while racing against the world’s best racing cars. In the video, you can see a Porsche 991 GT3 RS, a McLaren Senna, and a McLaren P1 quickly fall far behind the silent Plaid, or as Unplugged Performance worded it, “get rapidly left behind in the Plaid’s electron tail.”
The second video below shows the Tesla Model S Plaid overtaking the McLaren P1 on the raceway.
As Unplugged Performance demonstrated in the videos above, Tesla’s Plaid Model S is indeed the fastest production car in the world. And its record will probably only be beaten by another Tesla Plaid vehicle.
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