Tesla’s Model S Plaid Broke the Speed Record for an Unmodified EV

The electric car revolution keeps gaining speed.

Two years after development began on Tesla’s Model S Plaid at the world-renowned Nürburgring test track, company CEO Elon Musk shared a Twitter post declaring that his car had shattered the world speed record for unmodified EVs.

Tesla’s Model S Plaid set a new world record for an unmodified production vehicle with a time of 7:30.909, going 103.35 mph (166.320 km/h), at the Nürburgring track.

“Tesla Model S Plaid just set official world speed record for a production electric car at Nürburgring. Completely unmodified, directly from factory,” read the billionaire’s tweet.

Elon Musk wants Tesla’s Model S Plaid to undergo substantial modifications

The Model S Plaid has undergone development for years, and arrived at Nürburgring in 2019, with Elon Musk’s company delivering orders of the vehicle to customers in June. In an immediate reply to himself, the Tesla CEO said that the all-electric vehicle will undergo modifications for aerodynamic upgrades, track tires, and carbon brakes, all of which will substantially enhance the Plaid’s performance. It could even outpace its new record at the German track that some people call “the Green Hell,” according to Teslarati. Optimizing vehicle performance has remained the central goal of Tesla, and its Plaid is the epitome of this philosophy. Some may feel frightened by the prospect of increasing the already dizzyingly fast vehicle’s speed with state-of-the-art specs.

As of writing, Tesla’s Model S Plaid is available to buy at $129,990, not including incentives. New orders might resume early next year, in Jan. or Feb. of 2022, but this could change. Telsa has come far since its salad days of common obscurity in the late 2000s. The Plaid was named so by Elon Musk in reference to a 1980s comedy “Space Balls”, itself a satire of sci-fi tropes surrounding the depiction of ludicrous speeds through space (which makes you wonder what “satire” means, to him). Anyway. As an updated version of Tesla’s flagship sedan, the Plaid is the latest in the company’s push to develop a sustainable alternative to the fossil fuel-powered transportation industry, the latter of which has played a colossal role in warming the global climate and exacerbating the frequency of world-historical catastrophes. All to say that, so long as the means of building all-electric cars, and their lithium-ion batteries, don’t serve to make our planet even less habitable, we’d love to see how fast Tesla cars can go in the coming years.

This was a breaking story and was regularly updated as new information became available.

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