Crazy fast Tesla P85D shoves passengers into seat

And is about to get (a wee bit) faster.

Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Model S P85D late last year in front of an exclusive audience of existing Tesla owners, and it already has Tesla fans all fired up, and perhaps those at Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini a bit impressed and those at Mercedes and Audi slightly green.

This new variant of the Model S all-electric saloon has two motors (the D stands for Dual) delivering the all-wheel drive function. The rear 310kW motor delivers 416hp and is supplemented by a 221hp 165kW motor in the front, an arrangement similar to the highly anticipated all-wheel drive Model X SUV (in fact, many fans were disappointed that it wasn't the Model X that was revealed, but we think the P85D more than appeased them).

With the power of the two motors combined, the vehicle is capable of an astounding 864 lb-ft of torque, propelling it from zero to 60mph in just 3.2 seconds; that puts this saloon in the same league as performance cars and decidedly ahead of other luxury saloon makers (hence the jealousy). Tesla actually officially calls this the “insane mode”.

There is a hilarious video by Dragtime going around that recorded unsuspecting passengers as the P85D launches from standstill into high speeds. The reactions include shock, appeals to god, strings of expletives and even a phone flying out of a kid’s hands (if your kids never put their phones down, it would be worth it to get this car just to make them do so).

 

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Other automakers are about to get a lot more impressed and even more jealous. Musk has just announced that a software update will shave off another 0.1 second from the current zero-to-60 time. Yes, a simple software update! Other car makers would spend months stripping down, tweaking and fiddling with parts to achieve that, and Tesla has just coolly managed that by changing some algorithm and then clicking 'send'.