Beating Tesla's coast-to-coast time in a Model S

A Tesla Model S. A race across the country. An average driving speed of 63 miles per hour. Now which part of that doesn't jibe?

A pair of drivers from Edmunds.com has set out to beat Tesla Motors' own cross-country time record by taking a Model S from Los Angeles (technically, Redondo Beach) to New York. And beat it they did, finishing the 3,332-mile route in 67 hours and 21 minutes, which was faster than Tesla's time by eight hours and 44 minutes. What's all the more impressive is that the pair had to recharge the car at Tesla's Superchargers 23 times, with an average of 38 minutes per stop, meaning that more than 14 hours were spent sitting still in recharge mode.

And while the car is as fast as it is quiet, Edmunds had to curb its enthusiasm on the throttle to ensure the EV got from Supercharger A to Supercharger B and so on, hence the relatively pedestrian average driving speed of 63 miles per hour. Case in point was the 223-mile run between Las Vegas and Beaver, Utah, which was the longest stretch between Superchargers and included a 5,000-foot elevation climb. That caused the team to bring its highway speed down to about 50 miles per hour in order to avoid being stranded by the roadside. Read about how they made it over on Edmunds.