This is our full review of the Tesla Model S Plaid. The Plaid is the tri-motor high-performance version of the Model S, and it has 1,020 horsepower and 1,050 pound-feet of torque. Yes, it's a full-on muscle sedan, and the acceleration is brutal. In this review, we discuss all matters as they concern the Model S, including the yoke steering, the new interior, luxury and tech.
TranscriptZAC PALMER: Hello, everybody. I'm Zac Palmer with Autoblog. And behind me here is the Tesla Model S Plaid. Yes, the tri-motor version of the Model S, the quickest production car of any car you can buy today. We'll see what that is tomorrow. 1,020 horsepower, 1,050 pounds feet of torque. And obviously, there's a whole lot more to the new Model S than just it being the plaid and all of the performance you get with that.
We're also trying out the steering yoke here for the first time. No more a wheel here, just the yoke. We're also getting to see Tesla's new interior for the Model S, the giant new infotainment screen, the bigger screen in the rear seat, and just checking out all of the enhancements that they've made to luxury for this car, exterior changes, and a whole lot more.
I'm super excited for this one. How about we go hop in the driver's seat and see what it's like to drive.
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Now you guys are probably wondering where we got it from? Obviously, Telsa does not do normal press loans. But we got this one from Turo actually. So this is a customer-owned vehicle. About 19,000 miles on it at this point.
We've had it for a limited period of time. 100 miles in just the day. But thankfully, we've had it out on some good roads here to get some decent impressions. Beyond my immediate surroundings here, obviously the big allure with this car is its powertrain. The three motor, or as Tesla refers to it as the tri-motor system in the Model S Plaid is unique to the Plaid.
So 1,020 horsepower, 1,050 feet of torque. I have it in plaid mode. Let's see what it does here. Oh. Yeah. I can confirm that it's quick. Honestly, I might go so far as saying terrifyingly quick, stupid ridiculously quick. I've already done that once or twice here, and it's made me giggle every single time.
That's in plaid mode that it really gives you that acceleration. When you put it in the chill and the sport mode, it does not go like that. As soon as you hit the throttle pedal, I hope you're pointed in the right direction because I don't think I've experienced anything as quick as this. I know that the Porsche Taycan is very, very close when you line them both up for a 0 to 60 route. But this, this is easily the quickest production car I have ever been in.
One thing that is honestly just downright necessary for how quick this thing is really solid visibility forward. Because the hood is very low for aerodynamics, this has a very, very low coefficient of drag that you end up having a really great expensive look out the front. Neither pillar is super inhibited in the view that you get out here.
Now the one area where you don't have a great view out of is the rear window. It's more just a small slot back there. And the way that the mirror is, it actually distorts the view a little bit. So not the greatest view out the back. But I do feel confident actually hitting the throttle and exercising those three electric motors with the view that I have out the front.
How are the brakes, you ask? They're OK. Honestly, though I think that I would want a little more brake from a car that is as quick as this. I've been in a lot of gasoline powered cars and even EVs that have brakes that feel like they're a whole lot better at hauling this thing down to speed than this one.
The actual pedal itself, it's not the softest feel, but it's also not the stiffest feel out there. So it sort of rides that center zone like many EVs with regenerative braking. It's pretty fun to go corner to corner, and instead of actually using the brakes, you just use the region power. I find that a lot of fun to do in EVs. And this one can totally do that in.
One sensation that is really, really coming through each time that I really hop on the throttle, you can feel it like some real vibrations almost as though they're artificial coming through the steering wheel. And it kind of enhances that feeling of acceleration. There's no like fake "Looney Tunes" noises going on here or anything, but you can definitely feel and sense that sense of massive speed.
Oh my goodness. The pickup right off of 0 is nuts. I mean, these are really, really wide grippy summer tires. And it almost feels like you get a little bit of scratch from every single corner, and it just goes. And it builds and builds and builds. You accelerate to 60 and it feels like it's hardly even getting started honestly, even though you've been so pinned to the back of your seats. Man, this is the kind of acceleration that is all involving and dominates a driving experience honestly.
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It's hard to talk about Tesla these days without talking about the quote, unquote, "FSD, Full Self-Driving Beta." Unfortunately, the car I'm testing right now does not have that technology on it, so I cannot test it. However, it does have the advanced autopilot technology with the navigation function and auto lane changes. So it's actually been really good on the highway so far. It's able to quickly recognize when there's a vehicle in front of you is going slower, and it actually automatically gets over to the left for you and makes that pass. And then once you've made that pass, it hops right back on over to the right.
Say you've inputted a destination in the navigation, and it realizes, oh, the exit is coming up soon, it very smartly moves over towards that exit, even getting on and off the highway. It's really, really quite smart. At least here in Southeast Michigan, everything has been fairly seamless on that end.
So beyond the brutal acceleration, the question is, how is this car just cruising around as a luxury car? It costs aspects about $148,000 according to Tesla's latest prices for the Model S Plaid with the options that this one has. So with that, you sort of expect a certain level of luxury beyond just the ease of use and the tech stuff.
As for the ride itself, it's definitely softer than say like a Model 3, rides far more like something like a BMW 5 Series, and just has that level of sophistication and damping. It sort of rides the middle between a stiff-ish sport sedan and being like a luxury cruise missile. So it's not the most stiffly sprung. It's not the most softly sprung. It's sort of lands in the middle there as far as the overall ride.
Now when you look at how quiet or loud it is, there's definitely a good bit of wind noise that makes it into this cabin. And I've also noticed that there's a number of creaks and rattles that this car has developed over its 19,000 miles of use. Definitely, more creaks and rattles than I would hope in a car that costs this much money.
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As far as the handling goes, honestly I'm a bit of a mixed bag right now in some of these longer sweepers that we have out here. The steering is really, really quick. As soon as you turn in with this yoke, which really doesn't require a lot of steering input when you're moving at speed, the front end just tucks right in nicely. However, it doesn't feel like it's a light and/or agile car by any means because you have a lot of weight behind you.
There's not a whole lot of body movement there. But it doesn't-- it just doesn't feel like it's moving in the most natural of ways honestly. There's one area where the yoke is a little awkward, trying to make that hand over hand turn there. There's just nothing to grab onto, and you're just kind of grabbing air. It's definitely going to take me some time to get used to this thing because it's not the most intuitive right off the bat.
Now this yoke may be flawed in some ways. But one way it actually is superior to a steering wheel is when you just cruising along and want to rest your hands, you have these giant flat surfaces on the bottom where you can just rest both hands. There's no wheel that's going up in a circular fashion to stop you from doing that. It's actually really, really comfortable because both my elbows are on both armrests. They're very ergonomically placed and all. And I'm just sitting here. I can eat up the miles with autopilot on. And I'm very, very relaxed. I quite like that.
Unfortunately though, that long distance comfort is really one of the only things that I really like about this yoke, though. You might assume, oh, well this is sort of shaped like a racing steering wheel, right, might this be better in the corners? And no. It really isn't. And I don't think that I have any more confidence or control in the corners with this. I honestly feel like I have less because if my hand slips, I just slip right off the wheel itself, which is not what I want to feel like when I'm going into a corner quickly.
So I feel like I'm holding the yoke itself a little tighter than I would a normal steering wheel, which is not really what you want to do for actual performance driving. You want to have a nice light grip on the wheel. As for what's middling, it's just slightly annoying that the yoke extends so far that it actually blocks out part of the touch screen here. And it's just this far corner that it blocks out. But that's actually where your settings are for all of the car controls. So every time you go to like smack that or try to change your temperature, your hand and the yoke is kind of in the way. And I just kind of have to lean around it a little bit to look at it.
I don't remember the last time where the steering wheel was in the way of using the infotainment screen. Seems like a really, really odd circumstance that Tesla has created for themselves here. But on the plus side for visibility, you can see the instrument cluster without any inhibitions at all. And the whole screen is visible. It doesn't matter how low or high you put the steering wheel, that your visibility is not affected.
Would I appreciate a heads up display? Yes, I certainly would. But this is at least better than the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y, which gives you no instrument cluster at all.
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So as I'm nearing the end of my time here with this Tesla Model S Plaid, I'm left feeling really, really great about the acceleration. There's no doubt that this thing lays down the power pretty much unlike anything else out there. You'd have to go into the realm of a Porsche Taycan Turbo S to really get something as quick as this in a straight line for a reasonable price. And the handling, well, it's just good. But the Tesla Model S has never been a bastion of handling. And--
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And corner performance, it's always been about freaking people out with just how stupid fast it is. And the Plaid really is the pinnacle of what that stands for. It is unbelievable speed, probably reaching the point where our tire technology can take us honestly. We probably cannot go much quicker than what we have right here.
Do you need anything more than this? Absolutely not. This is so, so fast on a daily basis. You will be doing extra legal speeds so, so, so quick. But the fact that you can makes it incredible. And it makes us one of the coolest and wildest American muscle luxury sports sedans, whatever you want to call it, that's out there that's available to buy.
The price is steep at $148,000. It doesn't really deliver on the luxury sense of that. You could really, really like it if you're into the tech side of things. But if you're somebody who's into the s-class or maybe like BMW 7 series who really enjoys that kind of driving, this isn't that one for you. This is the one for somebody who just loves going stupid fast, has awesome, awesome driver assistance technology, at least what I've tried out in the autopilot full self-driving beta. You can check out the YouTube videos yourself. But at the end of the day, this is a very, very special sports sedan with how crazy, crazy quick it is.
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So I'm out of the car now after spending the day with this Tesla Model S Plaid. You might even be able to hear the fan still running. I just finished doing a couple launches, getting the car into cheetah stance and waiting for the whole rigmarole to wait for it to actually warm up enough to launch. Its stupid fast, like mind-meltingly fast. I'm still sort of recovering from it honestly. But that's really the big takeaway with this thing, is that I don't know that there is another ultimate muscle American luxury sports sedan that provides this sort of experience.
Obviously, you have things like the Hellcat with the stupid amount of horsepower and torque. But those are all about noise and everything. This just plants you to the seat like nothing else I have ever felt before. And that's the big dominating thing with this car.
There are some negatives, of course too, things like the yoke. That's a big question mark. And I really have not liked it over my day with it. But then there's other pluses like the tech. Autopilot has honestly been really, really great and convenient so far. It's a lot better than a lot of other driver assistance systems that I've tried and other manufacturers. That's a huge plus. The interior I think is also a huge, huge improvement for most Tesla products out there. This is a lot nicer than something you get in the previous Model S, and it's also a lot nicer than what you get in a Model 3 or Model Y. That said, is it Mercedes or BMW level quality in luxury? No, absolutely not. But you'd expect that for a $148,000 price, which makes it a bit of a disappointment.
So what you end up with here is a stonking quick sedan. Is it a luxury sedan? You can make the argument that it really isn't. It's priced like one, but the interior quality does not really match up to a car that's $148,000. Instead, you get something that is literally quicker than any other production car out there, has epic tech like autopilot, which worked really well all day long, the great supercharger network, and a range of 348 miles, which compares very favorably to a lot of EVs out there today. Now you just have to decide where your priorities lie. Power and tech or refinement and luxury? The choice is yours. With Autoblog, I'm Zac Palmer.
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