Will strapping three small jet engines to the rear of a Tesla Model S P85D help to improve its acceleration? One keen YouTuber recently set out to answer that question.
The following Model S is owned by the man behind the Warped Perception channel and, out of the box, the P85D is admittedly a very quick car. Now, the YouTuber’s Tesla is quicker than ever before.
It is no secret that Tesla plans to offer the next-generation Roadster with up to 10 cold gas thrusters to improve its performance but there is some debate as to just how effective they will be. The YouTuber’s creation isn’t quite as complex as what Tesla’s will be but still took quite a lot to make a reality.
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For starters, a new fuel tank had to be fitted to the car and a custom support was made to support the three jet engines hanging off the rear of the Tesla. The engines consume between 1.5 – 2.0 gallons of fuel per minute so they’re not exactly something you’d want to use on a long highway journey.
Impressively, the car can actually be driven on the jet engines alone and was able to cruise down the highway at 60 mph (96 km/h), even though one of the engines stopped working.
Then there is the straight-line acceleration. When running purely on electric power, the Model S P85D recorded a best 0-60 mph (0-96 km/h) time of 4.38 seconds on a slightly damp section of the road. For the second run, the three jet engines were powered up and the car’s 0-60 mph time dropped to 3.32 seconds, a very impressive result indeed.