The enormous speed of the Tesla Model S Plaid has been the topic of great interest and now, Jay Leno has chimed in about his own experience of the car.
Speaking on the Spike’s Car Radio podcast (starts at 13:50), Jay Leno talked about an experience he recently had in the car. Speaking to the hosts of the show, Leno said that he had taken the Model S Plaid to the drag strip at Auto Club Famosa, near Bakersfield, California.
“I made one pass, I drove up, had the NHRA guys there to make it official, I turned a 9.247 at 152[.09] mph,” he said. “I’ll send you the timing slip. Completely stock. It was unbelievable. I mean, and you’re talking a four-door car with the air conditioner on.”
This reflects well on the Tesla, which as Leno points out is a comfortable, four-door family car. Despite appearances, its performance figures are more akin to supercars. The Model S Plaid officially makes 1,020 hp and goes 390 miles per charge. The Model S Plaid+, meanwhile, will reportedly make 1,100 hp, hit 60 mph in less than two seconds, top out at 200 mph (321 km/h), and run the quarter-mile in less than 9 seconds.
The time puts the Tesla among the fastest production cars on sale. In fact, in Wikipedia’s ranking of fastest quarter-mile time for production cars, the Model S Plaid outperforms everything else, beating hypercars like the Bugatti Chiron Sport (9.4 seconds) and the Porsche 918 Spyder (9.7 seconds).
The Rimac Nevera was recently clocked at 8.6 seconds, giving it the unofficial record as the fastest production car on earth through the quarter-mile, though at $2.4 million, it’s in a totally different league.
The Tesla Model S Plaid has also proven itself to be speedy around a race track. It was recently reported to have lapped Laguna Seca in 1:29.9, a similar time to track-focused cars like the Dodge Viper ACR and the McLaren 720S.
The Model S Plaid was supposed to be unveiled at an event on June 3, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted recently that it would be delayed by a week.
Model S Plaid delivery pushed to June 10. Needs one more week of tweak.
This car feels like a spaceship. Words cannot describe the limbic resonance.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 29, 2021