Okay. Now what are their lap times? Center of gravity is one of the dozens of aspects working in conjunction that make cars fast. One of the most important being, weight.
Around Willow Springs it's slower than a Ford Mustang Ecoboost (0-60 5.2s, 310hp), and around Laguna it's close to 3 seconds slower than a VW Golf R (0-60 4.5s, 300hp)
The Tesla is a luxury barge after all, not a sports car, so these results shouldn't exactly be surprising.
Exactly, yet people who have no clue about cars will say that because it has a faster 0-60 time it's a faster car. Teslas marketing department is damn good.
Smooth, effortless acceleration is definitely a luxury feature, too. This is exactly why 6 figure luxury sedans often have very powerful V8s, V10s, or even V12s.
Just don't confuse that with being a fast car, at least not around a track.
You should at least do it the justice of pointing out what the driver said:
>The lap itself was around 10 minutes Bridge to Gantry (in heavy traffic) but unfortunately the car went into a reduced power mode about 3 minutes in due to excess battery heat (at least, that’s my guess).
>However, before it did it was able to keep a GT3 RS going full chat, within shouting distance (at the 2:00 mark) far longer than any 4,700lb sedan has a right to.
>I think without the reduced power output and traffic, a B-T-G lap under nine minutes is possible. According to the Bridge To Gantry site, that would put it in the company of some really quick hot hatches.
The Model S is a really nice sedan. But its performance on the track is clearly sub par because a) it’s heavy and b) it just isn’t designed to run at full tilt for very long before the batteries or motors start to overheat. Sure, from cold the performance is impressive but if you only get that performance for a few minutes, it’s rather less so.
The design spec was probably something like “give the buyer the feeling they’ve got their money’s worth when they burn off their friends from the next set of red lights” not “beat a top-line Porsche round the Nürburgring”. And that’s OK - no one expects executive barges to be amazing track cars, except (apparently) for the hoards of Telsa boosters who don’t seem able to accept that their object of desire might have the odd flaw.
Telsa are the Apple of the automotive world, right down to having their very own reality distortion field :)
