News
Should I Buy the Tesla Model S P85 or Standard 85kWh?
It is, perhaps, the biggest question many prospective hand-wringing owners of the Model S wrestle with – should I get the Tesla Model S P85 or stick to the Standard version?
After all, once you’ve talked yourself up the first $10k from a 60kwh to an 85kwh battery, what’s another $12K or so for the Performance version?
And if you don’t pay for the upgrade to the more powerful drivetrain, WILL YOU REGRET IT LATER?! Want to know the bottom line? My journey to owning the Model S led me to ask the following questions: Will you regularly drive over 180 miles/day? Will you use the Tesla for a road trip car? If the answer to both those questions is “No”, get the 60 kWh. Period. Done.
The 60 has comparable real world performance to the 85 and reportedly feels even more spirited because of less battery weight (though ballasted to match an 85, the ballast is apparently located differently somehow, according to reports from people who have driven both). The 60 is a superb in-town commuter car or medium distance tourer (with destination charging). If either those questions are answered with a “Yes”, get the 85kWh. By the time you pay the extra $2k to enable the Supercharging option on a 60 you’ve already started toward an 85 anyway. Like the evil dojo master in Karate Kid said, “Finish him!” Get an 85. Now don’t go crazy right to the P85+, let’s look at the upper extreme first.
The P85+ is apparently designed solely for the purpose of destroying tires – rear tires – every 5,000 miles or less. Unless you’re coming from a high performance car or plan to enjoy track days, fuggeddaboutit. It’s basically an even more expensive version of the P85 with staggered tires and other suspension tricks. Real world, this is overkill and more about badge ego than useful value (for the vast majority of non-professional racing drivers).
Speaking of real world, the performance difference for the P85 and the S85 exists primarily in one place: 0-30mph. That’s it. From 30mph and up they are virtually identical and both will silently roar around slower traffic with equal capability. Originally the Tesla Model S P85 upgrade only came with some other standard features that are a mixed bag (to me). Thankfully Tesla has decided to allow buyers the option of upgrading only the drivetrain. Still, that presents some problems. A P85 with the 19″ wheels just overwhelms them. Remember the only performance advantage it has is 0-30mph and that requires grip to actually enjoy it. For a variety of reasons (but chief among them rolling resistance and wind resistance) Tesla’s tires are taller rather than wider to increase their contact patch. A traditional sports sedan would get wider tires to increase grip but the Model S gets taller tires… ergo, a P85 on 19s just bounces off the traction control constantly. In a sunny climate that might not happen as often but here in pothole country you’ll get clunks and shudders from way back there at the wheels all the time as the traction control tries to reign in your lunacy. My friend Jake and I had several days with a silver loaner (read more about it here) and it was fun but also frustrating.
Unfortunately, if you’re living anywhere with four seasons you are NOT going to want to alleviate the traction problem by getting 21″ wheels. We have potholes. LOTS of them. BIG ones. And bridges with expansion joints that will turn those wheels into ovals. You know how when you go to the grocery store you always get a cart with that annoying wobbly wheel? Would you like to buy one for $90-100K? I didn’t think so. Speaking of expenses, many P85 owners report higher than average tire wear (regardless of wheel size).
I don’t know of a true head-to-head drag race video of all THREE versions of the Model S (60/85/P85)– amazed no one has done it yet– but the video above is very recent and posts a time faster than the Tesla website does. You can read more opinions on that video HERE.
Another recent video does offer a head-to-head of a standard Tesla Model S P85 vs S85 and you can see that after the first 30 feet or so, the S85 and the P85 match stride-for-stride. In fact, at the end of the 1/4 the trap speed on the standard 85 is actually higher. Skip ahead 26 seconds to catch the Tesla family feud.
One long-time P85 owner asserts the difference in launch speed really only exists at higher states of charge. As a result, maintaining that performance edge over the S85 requires more frequent and fuller charges of the main pack, potentially increasing long-term degradation. Ironically, the only times you really should charge the pack up to higher levels (for distance), you wouldn’t want to enjoy the harder launches because it would adversely affect your range.
So the S85 is a tad slower off the line. No one but a P85 owner is ever going to know that. And, frankly, the power delivery at launch is a lot smoother. The P85 is pretty brutal. Oh, it’s damn impressive– but it’s also jarring. I like the slightly tapered building on of WHOOSH that I get from the S85. I think it keeps my wife from realizing how often I’m toying with the other cars around us. James Bond, after all, wears a suit… not a karategi. <— brought that back to Karate Kid nicely, didn’t I? I have no idea why either.
Clearly I could go on and on about my configuration thought processes– and how they’ve evolved since taking delivery– but that’s a topic for another time. If you haven’t already read about my “Journey to Tesla” then check it out for some insights into how I got this car in my driveway and how you can too. It starts by clicking RIGHT HERE.
Read more at www.TeslaPittsburgh.com and check out the videos on our YouTube channel at www.YouTube.com/NZCUTR.
News
SpaceX set to launch astronauts and a classified Falcon Heavy mission on the same day
SpaceX plans three launches Thursday, including Crew-13 astronauts and Falcon Heavy’s first classified NRO mission.
SpaceX is lining up one of the busiest single days in its history, and the company offered a preview on Wednesday morning with a simple post on X: “Sunrise at pad 40.” The video and photos show Falcon 9 standing at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, roughly a day before it is scheduled to carry four astronauts to the International Space Station.
That launch is only the first of three SpaceX missions planned for Thursday, October 1, across both coasts.
Sunrise at pad 40 pic.twitter.com/J7Qme4VvIX
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 30, 2026
Crew-13 is targeting liftoff at 11:10 a.m. ET, with a backup opportunity Friday at 10:47 a.m. ET. NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins will command the mission, with NASA’s Luke Delaney as pilot and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov serving as mission specialists. According to NASA, Dragon is set to dock with the forward port of the station’s Harmony module around 8 p.m. ET, less than nine hours after launch. Watkins is the only member of the crew who has flown before, and Kutryk will become the first Canadian to reach orbit through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
The Falcon 9 booster is flying for the third time after supporting Crew-12 and a Starlink mission, and it will attempt a landing at Landing Zone 40 beside the pad. That site made its debut in February when the Crew-12 booster touched down there, as Teslarati reported at the time. Crew-13 will relieve the Crew-12 astronauts, who have been aboard the station since the middle of February.
On the West Coast, another Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in a window running from 2:18 to 3:16 p.m. ET, a flight NASASpaceflight lists as a Transporter rideshare mission.
The day is set to close at 11:53 p.m. ET, when Falcon Heavy launches from Launch Complex 39A with NROL-97, the first National Reconnaissance Office payload ever to fly on the rocket. SpaceX rolled the vehicle out to the pad Tuesday night. Its two side boosters, which previously flew GOES-U, ViaSat-3 F3 and NASA’s Roman Space Telescope, will return to Landing Zones 1 and 2, while a new center core will be expended in the Atlantic. The Roman launch took place on August 30, so NROL-97 will come barely a month later as Falcon Heavy’s third flight of 2026 and 14th overall.
NASA taps SpaceX to launch the telescope that could unlock new worlds
If all three Florida boosters land as planned, it would be the first time the Space Coast has seen landings at LZ-40, LZ-1 and LZ-2 on the same day, according to the Orlando Sentinel, which has warned residents in Brevard, Orange and Volusia counties that more than one sonic boom is possible.
The schedule arrives just three days after Starship reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 from Starbase, Texas, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites. If Thursday’s missions stay on time, SpaceX will have flown Starship, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy from four different pads in about four days.
Crew-13 is also the start of a longer run for Dragon. NASA recently added Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s contract in a $946 million modification, keeping Dragon as the agency’s only operational ride to the station while Boeing’s Starliner remains grounded.
Although the two vehicles are built for completely different use cases, Tesla utilized engineering expertise while developing both the Cybercab and Semi to build a thermal architecture that would fit both vehicles. Of course, with some slight revisions.
The development was noted by Lars Moravy and Dan Priestley last week at Tesla’s Semi Handover event in Sparks, Nevada, where the company showed off its dedicated production facility for the Class 8 truck.
🚨 Tesla designed the integrated thermal systems for Cybercab and Semi at the same time as the vehicles were both in development
Tesla wanted to build one thermal system that worked with both vehicles, apart from small modifications.
Semi and Cybercab share parts 🤯 pic.twitter.com/KmzSsUbrcg
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 25, 2026
Tesla’s decision to develop one thermal architecture for both the Cybercab and Semi is one of the more revealing engineering choices in the company’s 2026 lineup:
“We designed it at the same time we designed the Cybercab and we said okay we’re going to take our most efficient vehicle and our biggest vehicle and we’re going to take one thermal system and make it work for both.”
Core parts, meaning the compressor, pumps, and heat exchangers, are shared, with only modest changes to cooling-loop sizing and a larger radiator on the truck. The result, they said, is a compressor and thermal stack already proven across millions of miles, delivering “reliability from day one.”
Priestley also highlighted a practical payoff of the indirect design:
“There’s no AC lines, there’s no refrigerant lines…It comes from the factory fully charged, sealed with refrigerant, and it just exchanges coolant. It doesn’t actually run refrigerant up to the front of the vehicle.”
This eliminates potentially leak-prone plumbing that would otherwise require hands-on service, reducing overall uptime and potentially cutting into business margins. The megamanifold runs cabin HVAC and every powertrain heating and cooling loop at once, recapturing waste heat from motors and the battery instead of dumping it the way a diesel engine does.
The approach is just the latest chapter in a continuing story of stretching thermal solutions across wildly different vehicles. Model Y’s Octovalve evolved into the Super Manifold used on Cybertruck, and later Model S/X refreshes. Cybercab then introduced Supermanifold V3, which Tesla says is 80 percent automated to build and 38 percent more efficient than typical automotive thermal systems.
This thermal system is also shared with Cybercab – one thermal system for both our most efficient vehicle & our biggest vehicle
— Tesla Semi (@tesla_semi) September 25, 2026
Tesla has done the same with the 4680 cells, both being utilized in the Cybertruck and Semi, and with heat-pump compressors that Priestley noted were already common across the passenger-car fleet.
Concurrent development of crucial vehicle elements buys scale and reliability that a truck-only thermal system could not match. High-volume passenger car parts are cheaper and more accessible, which can give fleets a sealed, low-maintenance loop of operation from their first day of operation.
For owners and operators, that translates into less energy spent on cabin heat in the colder months, fewer refrigerant-related repairs, and a thermal architecture already stress-tested at passenger-car volumes before the first high-volume Semi left the lines in Nevada.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk certainly tipped off some details of the Tesla Roadster event with a broadening of information regarding the company’s decision to delay the unveiling for two weeks.
For years, people have speculated about what the Roadster will be capable of. While there have been plenty of things said about what it *could* do, we have not seen or been told by Tesla what it will actually be capable of.
However, over the past few days, Tesla’s weather updates have truly pushed the speculation into Plaid Mode, basically all but confirming the car will have some sort of aerial capability — whether that would be hovering or fully flying remains to be seen — but it definitely seems that it will be able to leave the ground intentionally.
“Because this event can only be held outdoors…”
Tesla posted on Monday that it would delay the Roadster event until October 15, and it indicated that it had to do this because the event “can only be held outdoors.”
With the potential SpaceX collaboration to develop cold-gas thrusters that will help the vehicle go airborne, doing this indoors is probably not a safe, or even plausible, possibility.
Roadster event update
We’ve been tracking the weather closely with local meteorologists, but given the severe conditions predicted & because this event can only be held outdoors, we’ve made the difficult decision to reschedule.
New date is October 15. Additional details to…
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 28, 2026
FAA Airspace Restriction
The FAA gave Tesla a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) for 10,000 feet above ground level, much higher than the typical 2,000-foot restrictions that are usually placed at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas site.
Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges
Some have said that this massive increase is due to Tesla’s need to restrict unauthorized drone use for spying on the event.
Elon Admits High Winds
“Due to high winds, the new Roadster demo is postponed by 2 weeks,” Musk said in a post on X yesterday.
Due to high winds, the new Roadster demo is postponed by 2 weeks https://t.co/dV3ojDh1iT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 30, 2026
A reply reading, “What’s strong wind got to do with a car demo with four grounded wheels?” was directly below Musk’s post, satirically and sarcastically probing for more details.
All signs are pointing toward an aerial demonstration for the Roadster.
SpaceX set to launch astronauts and a classified Falcon Heavy mission on the same day
Tesla Cybercab and Semi have more in common than you might think
