Celebrated innovator billionaire Elon Musk in his latest tweet announced the refreshed lineup of Tesla’s luxury sedan Tesla S. The new variant is called the Tesla Model S Plaid. The Plaid is entertainment on wheels, which can reach 0-60 in less than 1.9 seconds, and has gears that will shift automatically. 

If you found the quickest version of Model S that reached 0 to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds slow for your needs, the new Plaid variant of the luxury electric vehicle from Tesla can do the same in less than 2 seconds. The new model S update comes with a new fine-tuned exterior, a rehauled interior, and a comprehensive performance update.  

In its official configurator, Tesla made sure auto heads know how the company is transforming from an enthusiast vehicle company to a luxury car company that prioritizes the environment. This is what the official configurator said: “The ultimate focus on driving: no stalks, no shifting. With a stalkless steering yoke, you can enjoy both the best car to drive, and the best car to be driven in,” 

As we said earlier, Tesla has only fine-tuned the exterior so one should not expect drastic design changes in the S variant of their cars. The company has kept it easy and has resculpted the front bumper, retained the glass roof, and will offer new 19 and 21 inches allow wheels. 

Futuristic Steering Wheel

When it comes to the interior, however, that’s a completely new and gorgeous story. The car now features a futuristic U-shaped wheel on the driver’s side which might remind you of those in sci-fi movies from Hollywood. 

On the front there’s the standard Tesla touchscreen, however, instead of being vertically placed, the screen is now placed horizontally. As the official configurator stated, the company has ditched the control stalks and now buttons on the steering wheel would take care of the job. The console in the center packs two quite large wireless smartphone charging pads. 

Goodby stalks, hello Artificial Intelligence 

As for the stalks, Tesla has brought in Artificial intelligence to replace the stalks and force buttons on the steering wheel. The force buttons on the wheel will enable the driver to turn signals, honk, turn autopilot on, control high beams and give voice commands. 

According to an internal document from Tesla, “The vehicle uses its Autopilot sensors to intelligently and automatically determine intended drive modes and select them. For example, if the front of Model S/X is facing a garage wall, it will detect this and automatically shift to Reverse once the driver presses the brake pedal. This eliminates one more step for the drivers of the world’s most intelligent production cars.” 

Play Cyberpunk on your Tesla

From the driver’s seat, let’s turn our heads to the seats behind. An 8-inch touchscreen will entertain the passengers at the back. This screen will be supported by 10 teraflops of computing power. According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the computing power of the system is equivalent to gaming consoles of this day and age and a person can play Cyberpunk on the Tesla’s entertainment system. For music lovers, the car comes with a 22-speaker 960-watt audio system.  

Blink and you will miss it! 0-60 in less than 2 seconds

But all these features will not be worth batting an eye if the performance of the car is not better compared to the last version. Tesla knows this fact and hence the Plaid version of Model S will come with a reconfigured battery and system which will help the car propel from 0-60 mph in less than 2 seconds. That’s not all, the Plaid variant has also a higher top speed compared to the standard version of Model S. The Plaid variant has a top speed of 320 kmph, breaking the previous record of the top speed of 250 kmph. Although note that to achieve those speeds, one would need to apply special wheels and tires which Tesla claims will be available by 2021.  

There are two versions of the Tesla Model S Plaid: standard and Plaid+. The standard Plaid version of the Model S has a range of 627 km whereas the Plaid+ has a range of a whopping 837 km. With this new update, Tesla has created a new record for the best ranged/quickest acceleration in an electric car in production.  

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