Telsa is back in the news, but this time nobody crashed and no one is getting sued. The Tesla Model S Plaid is one of the quickest cars ever made, sporting a 0-60 mph time of 1.99 seconds and 1,020 horsepower from its three high-performance motors.
Tesla founder Elon Musk took to Twitter to proclaim the car had just set the official world speed record for a production electric car at the Nürburgring - you can watch the lap in the video above.
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The Model S Plaid's recorded time (according to the Nürburgring) was 7 minutes and 35 seconds, which beats the Porsche Taycan Turbo by almost seven seconds.
However, a time sheet tweeted by Musk (below) suggests that perhaps the Model S Plaid went even quicker, with a time of 7:30 listed - although this doesn't appear to have officially counted.
That said, the Tesla's time is behind that of a few gas-powered models, and may not hold if Porsche ever gets around to lapping its more powerful Taycan Turbo S.
For example, the 2009 Nissan GT-R did a lap in just 7:29 flat and several other more "mundane" cars, such as the Audi RS3 and Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio did it faster.
Tesla Model S Plaid just set official world speed record for a production electric car at Nurburgring. Completely unmodified, directly from factory. pic.twitter.com/AaiFtfW5HtSeptember 9, 2021
Analysis: noteworthy, yet pointless
Musk said the Model S Plaid that set the record was direct from the factory and was completely unmodified.
That means that the controversial yoke steering wheel and stock cooling systems were in place for the record run.
Regardless of how you feel about Tesla or about the steering wheel, the fact that the car could pull out a lap time of that magnitude on one of the world's longest and most challenging tracks is noteworthy.
While lap times are impressive and certainly show that Tesla has a very quick car on its hands, it's hard to imagine a more pointless statistic for everyday car buyers.
Who, other than people gunning for view on YouTube, is going to take their $125,000+ electric luxury car and drive it as hard as possible on a racetrack?
Almost no one, that's who.
What's more, at a certain point, speed for the sake of speed becomes totally pointless, as there are very few places that a driver can take advantage of it safely – none of which are on public roads.
