The Tesla is fastest, but only to 60 mph

Tesla Ludicrous Setting

by Tim Higgins, The Wall Street Journal

The white four-door sedan rolled up to the starting line at a racetrack outside Los Angeles this month and lurched to a stop. Then the driver floored the pedal with a thunk.

After the test, the jubilant chief executive of the company that built this record-smashing beast took to Twitter to report a time of 2.27 seconds. If rounded up, however, the correct figure was 2.28 seconds, as one respondent noted.

"Take out the floor mats and its 2.27," the CEO boasted. For those lusting to go even faster, he offered another weight-saving tip: "Tesla service can remove [the] front trunk liner."

Yes, that’s right. The world’s quickest production car is a Tesla.

With the January software upgrade of the $135,700 version of the all-electric Model S P100D sedan, Elon Musk’s Silicon Valley auto maker Tesla Inc. has claimed bragging rights in an intensifying competition that has become the new obsession–and marketing strategy–among makers of high-end electric cars. Never mind saving the environment, perfecting the lithium-ion battery, or reducing global dependency on fossil fuels. The goal here is gut-busting acceleration.

The Tesla app shows the button for "Ludicrous" mode.

If the driver pushes a button labeled "Ludicrous"–a nod to the 1987 movie "Spaceballs"–on the Tesla’s dashboard screen, a message appears that says: "Are you sure you want to push the limits? This will cause accelerated wear of the motor, gearbox and battery." The two options given are: "No, I want my Mommy," and "Yes, bring it on!"

"If you’re looking the wrong way, you get whiplash and your glasses fly off your head," said Brooks Weisblat, 43 years old, a Tesla owner who posts videos of races on his fan website, DragTimes.com, that attract millions of viewers. "You’ve got old-school, muscle-car guys who cannot handle an electric car beating them."

Electric cars have one major advantage over cars with internal combustion engines. Because the delivery of juice to the motor is instantaneous, and the motor reaches maximum power immediately, they have loads of torque and jump off the line with surprising violence–and without making a sound. Motor Trend said the Model S P100D’s acceleration, compared with other cars, is like "the difference between being accidentally pushed by a clumsy person and being aggressively shoved."

Tesla and other manufacturers, hoping to shake the image of fuel-efficient vehicles as wimpy, pear-shaped green machines, have taken a page from the muscle-car era of the 1960s. They have pulled out all the stops–and sometimes even stretched the boundaries of credulity–to post the most eye-popping performance numbers.

Ever since the Model S clocked a zero-to-60 time of 4.4 seconds in 2012, other makers have been fighting to shave hundredths-of-seconds from the mark. The race has escalated in recent months.

In August, Mr. Musk introduced a larger battery that helped the highest-end Model S get to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds. Following that, the Menlo Park, Calif., startup Lucid Motors, which counts former Model S chief engineer Peter Rawlinson among its ranks, demonstrated what its powertrain could do by rigging a Mercedes cargo van–dubbed "Edna"–with its electric motor and batteries. Edna hit 60 mph in 2.74 seconds, according to an Oct. 11 announcement.

In December, the company said it plans to introduce a sedan, targeted for 2019, that can hit 60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds.

About a month after the Edna display, Mr. Musk announced his team was working on an upgrade to its software that would boost the speed of its Model S P100D to 2.4 seconds.

On Jan. 3, Faraday Future, another electric-car startup, introduced its luxury sedan at a glitzy Las Vegas news conference with a zero-to-60 claim of 2.39 seconds. The Los Angeles-area company showed video of its new model, the FF 91, beating a Tesla during a drag race.

"2.39–I like the way that sounds," Peter Savagian, Faraday vice president of propulsion engineering, told the crowd. "It means that, under its own power, the FF 91 accelerates faster than the earth can accelerate if it fell off a cliff–put another way, the FF 91 outruns gravity."

The following week, Mr. Musk posted on Twitter that he thought the upgrade to Tesla’s high-end Model S P100D’s Ludicrous+ mode could probably allow it to reach 60 mph in 2.34 seconds and–if stripped down–the car could do it in 2.1 seconds.

That’s when Motor Trend got involved.

Ahead of testing, Tesla had a request. "They asked our test driver how much he weighed and when they found out he weighed 155 pounds, they said, ‘Our figuring has been assuming a 150-pound driver. Can we take the carpet out of the trunk?" Frank Markus, Motor Trend’s technical director said.

The response: Nope.

For many years, makers of mainstream hybrids, such as Toyota’s Prius, have focused on fuel efficiency. But in the superpremium luxury market, where cars sell for about $100,000 or more, speed rules. Only 8% of new vehicle customers in the U.S. last year said they would be willing to pay extra for a more environmentally friendly vehicle, according to a survey by market researcher Strategic Vision.

"When you talk about performance, we’re talking about, ‘What is the feel of a vehicle while driving?’ And one of the easiest ways to feel that is zero to 60," said Alexander Edwards, president of Strategic Vision.

There is one small problem with marketing electric cars as speed machines, however. Short bursts of acceleration are the thing these cars excel at. As speeds increase, a powerful gas-fueled car will surge ahead. Motor Trend noted that the Ferrari LaFerrari was slower to 60 mph, but hit 70 mph a 10th of a second quicker than the Tesla.

"A Tesla might get a jump off the line against a Cadillac CTS-V," said Bob Lutz, the former vice chairman of General Motors Co. whose long career included developing the Dodge Viper. "But after the first few hundred yards, the Cadillac would draw even and then pull away."

Moreover, hard acceleration, Mr. Lutz said, will draw a lot of energy and reduce an electric car’s range.

Motor Trend’s Mr. Markus said testers haven’t been able to complete a high-speed lap at the 2.2-mile Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca with a Tesla for another reason. "You can’t run it that hard for that long … the battery overheats if you use all of that power," he said. Tesla says it’s designed the system to avoid overheating in such situations by decreasing the power available, and that Motor Trend hasn’t tested the Model S around that track since the recent improvements.

Motor Trend’s testers have even tried icing the battery, Mr. Markus said–to no avail. Tim Higgins, The Wall Street Journal