Tesla held its Model S Plaid delivery event on Thursday, June 10.
The livestreamed gathering took place at Tesla’s manufacturing facility in Fremont, California.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk arrived on stage in typically modest fashion — by hurtling around the Fremont test track at 100-plus mph in the new all-electric Plaid (see video above). Speaking to a small but enthusiastic crowd, Musk spent the next half-hour running through the car’s plethora of features, some of them shown below.
The tri-motor, 1,020-horsepower Model S Plaid sits at the top of the Model S range and comes with a serious boost to its performance specs, including a top speed of 200 mph and an astonishingly zippy zero-to-60 time of just 1.99 seconds. In a tweet earlier this week, Musk described the Model S Plaid as the “quickest production car ever made of any kind,” adding, “Has to be felt to be believed.”
The vehicle’s estimated range of 390 miles is the second best among all of Tesla’s electric cars, with only the Model S Long Range able to go further — 412 miles — on a single charge. Tesla had been expected to launch a Plaid+ model, too, featuring additional range, but Musk recently announced that the company had canceled the plan, claiming there was “no need” for it “as Plaid is just so good.” We’ll wait for customer feedback on that one.
The first deliveries of the Model S Plaid come nine months after Tesla started taking orders for the new vehicle, which, at just a shade over $130,000, is the company’s most expensive production vehicle to date. Musk told the crowd the automaker is ready to deliver the first 25 Model S Plaid cars now, increasing to several hundred vehicles a week “soon,” and thousands a week “probably in the next quarter.”
Musk added that the arrival of the Model S variant marked “something that’s quite important about the future of sustainable energy, which is that we have to show that an electric car is the best car, hands down.”
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