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Tesla Model S Plaid: Everything we know – performance, features, versions and more
Elon Musk remarked during the recently-held third-quarter earnings call that Tesla is continuing the production of the Model S more for “sentimental reasons.” The vehicle, after all, is a niche product compared to the best-selling, reasonably-priced Model 3. Yet, the Model S remains Tesla’s flagship car, and it will remain so, if Musk’s statements are any indication.
“The Model S literally won Motor Trend‘s best car ever in history by the way. It’s incredible, especially the new one with variable damping suspension, hospital operating room HEPA filter for air purification, the raven powertrain. It’s the fastest car in the world, and it’s just so easy to drive. It makes you feel like Superman driving that car. It’s incredibly safe. It’s just an amazing vehicle,” Musk said.
The Model S is Tesla’s first car that it designed from the ground up, and thus, is already about seven years old. As such, it appears that the time is right for Tesla to look into updating the Model S for the Model 3 and Model Y era.
Enter the “Plaid” Model S. The aggressively styled vehicles were brought to the Nurburgring seemingly as part of Tesla’s efforts at establishing its own record at the track, which just so happens to be the location where the Porsche Taycan — a car long expected to be a Model S rival — was tempered as it was refined for release.
Based on images and videos of the Model S Plaid, the vehicle seems to be every bit of a monster as intended by the electric car maker. Here’s what you need to know about Tesla’s Model S with Plaid Powertrain.
It will look slightly different
While the vehicles retain the classic general Model S look, Tesla’s Plaid prototypes in the Nurburgring today feature a widebody kit to accommodate wider tires. The vehicles are also optimized for track use, as could be seen in various aero improvements to the all-electric sedan. Among these are a larger front air intake, a front lip spoiler, large air vents behind the front wheels, a diffuser at the rear, and a new spoiler.
Being test units, it remains uncertain if the Plaid Model S production version will retain these aero enhancements.
It will have three motors
Taking a page from the next-generation Tesla Roadster’s playbook, the Plaid Model S will have a three-motor configuration. Tesla has not announced details about this setup, though one can infer that it involves placing two motors at the rear and one motor at the front, just like the company’s upcoming all-electric supercar.
It will be track-capable
The Model S, even at its P100D trim, was notoriously prone to throttling issues on the track. Not so with the Plaid version. The Plaid Model S is made to attack corners at incredibly high speeds and complete multiple laps around a track without losing performance. So far, comments from eyewitnesses at the Nurburging have remarked that the Plaid vehicles Tesla brought over are almost disturbingly fast, and even at their initial iterations, each vehicle was reportedly finishing five or six laps a day around the nearly 13-mile Nurburgring with optimum performance.
It will likely have at least two trims
Tesla’s Plaid Powertrain appears to be a direct reference to the three electric motors in the vehicle. But it appears that the electric car maker will be releasing more than one variant of its tri-motor Model S. During its initial excursion to the Nurburging, it was reported that the blue Plaid Model S unit was able to complete a 7:40 lap, close to the results of the Taycan Turbo. The red Model S Plaid prototype, on the other hand, achieved a hand-stopped time of 7:23.
This certainly seems to be an indication that the two prototypes correspond to different versions of the vehicle. It might be cliche or Elon Musk’s classic meme lord-worthy humor, but it appears that its red Plaid Model S is the faster of its two prototypes. This is quite interesting, as spy shots of the blue Plaid Model S seem to suggest that the car was stripped down, while the seemingly faster red Model S is attacking the track with all its door panels and extra seats.
Its price will be expensive but cheaper than the Taycan Turbo
Elon Musk has noted on Twitter that the Plaid Model S will be priced higher than the Raven Performance version that is on sale today, though he also noted that the vehicle will cost “less than our competitors.” With this in mind, it appears that a Plaid Model S will start between the $100k-$150k range. This seems to be the case considering that Porsche priced its Taycan Turbo variant at just over $150k before options.
It will enter production in less than a year
Elon Musk has stated that the Tesla Model S Plaid units are set for production around Summer 2020, which is also around the same time that the company will start manufacturing the Model Y crossover. This is quite in line with previous leaks from the Fremont plant, which pointed to the electric car maker tooling the facility for the production of the Model Y and an updated Model S.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Elon Musk hinted a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be coming, and Wall Street is taking notice.
Elon Musk gave his clearest signal yet that Tesla and SpaceX could eventually combine, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles that the two companies’ deepening collaboration makes the question worth asking. Sawyer Merritt first surfaced the highlight on X Tuesday.
Asked directly why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate given how closely they already work together, Musk told hosts at the summit: “Great question there. With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who joined Musk on stage, added that SpaceX personnel have already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, saying the businesses are integrating “faster than I thought,” though “not fully integrated yet,”
The comments landed on top of merger speculation that has been building on Wall Street for months. JPMorgan has called a tie-up “strategically coherent on paper,” pointing to overlapping ambitions in AI, robotics, energy, transportation and space. Jefferies went further, estimating Musk could retain roughly 55.3 percent voting control in a deal structured without a premium, a scenario that would still leave room for Tesla shareholders to come out ahead. On Kalshi, traders now put the odds of a merger before 2028 at 66 percent.
Tesla’s stake in SpaceX, still under one percent, traces back to its earlier investment in xAI, which converted to SpaceX equity after SpaceX absorbed the AI company. The two are also jointly building Terafab, a chip facility in Austin meant to serve both Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s satellite ambitions. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has stood by a 2027 merger timeline for months, and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently floated a similar case, an idea Musk pushed back on directly at the time.
Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking
The timing adds another layer. Tesla has scheduled an October 1 unveiling for its next generation Roadster at a venue near SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site, using the phrase “Go for launch” in its promotional material. Both stocks dipped roughly 2 percent Monday before recovering slightly in premarket trading Tuesday, with SpaceX shares up about 0.4 percent and Tesla essentially flat.
Musk stopped short of confirming anything is in motion. But unlike his past denials of a corporate restructuring, this response didn’t rule one out, and it came with Shotwell sitting next to him describing an integration that’s already underway.
The Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by the company’s CEO Elon Musk, who has been a big reason the product has such high expectations due to delayed timelines and a constant need to make it even more insane than before.
Tesla announced on September 12 that it would officially unveil the Roadster in Waco, Texas, on October 1, ending years of patience for fans and reservation holders who have waited for the all-electric supercar to enter production since 2017.
Musk has said that this event will be well worth the wait on several occasions, and last year on the Joe Rogan Experience, he said that there should be a closing chapter to supercars- the end of cars that aren’t focused on safety.
He said:
“Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable. My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. I think if Peter wants a flying car, he should be able to buy one. I think it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever. This is some crazy technology in this car. Let’s just put it this way: if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”
Musk’s teases have continued, and now that the event is roughly two weeks away, it seems like Roadster is finally going to show up and blow some minds:
It’s out of this world
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Excitement guaranteed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Tesla has definitely dragged out the development of the Roadster, but there is a good reason for it.
Tesla has been working on many other projects, most notably self-driving efforts to increase passenger safety, and those simply took priority over the Roadster, a low-volume, high-performance sports car that has a lightning-fast acceleration rate of 0-60 MPH in just 1.1 seconds, could potentially fly, and contributes very little to the company’s mission.
However, many people have the Roadster on pre-order through the referral program or with their own money, and it is time that Tesla delivers on that.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Elon Musk’s Boring Company says Vegas Loop stations will double by year end once again.
The Boring Company says the Vegas Loop’s station count will double by the end of the year, tying the target to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers in Las Vegas. “Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!” the company wrote in a post on X, attaching listings for a Loop driver and a senior Loop operations manager.
The number checks out against what’s already public, with the Vegas Loop currently running 14 operational stations, while the Boring Company’s own project page lists 28 as the target for the end of 2026.
Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!
Urgently hiring exceptional and enthusiastic Drivers and Ops Managers.
Apply here!
Driverhttps://t.co/ZUPXBYTONb
Senior Loop Ops Managerhttps://t.co/mV6V22V8jH pic.twitter.com/IZ9FqIw8WY
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) September 14, 2026
Much of that growth is tied to tunnels that are already built and waiting on an opening date. A roughly two-mile dual tunnel system under Paradise Road, connecting Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, is expected to open in stages over the coming weeks, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief executive Steve Hill told the Review-Journal last week. New stations at 4744 Paradise, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and the former Gordon Biersch site would come online with it, several of them built to speed up rides to Harry Reid International Airport ahead of Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Clark County entitled Vegas Loop for 123 stations after approving 19 more in August, as Teslarati reported at the time. Entitlement and construction move at different speeds on this project, so county approval alone does not guarantee a station opens on any particular schedule.
Clark County approved 18 additional stations back in 2023, part of a plan that pushed the system’s target to 69 stations across 65 miles, doubling the network on paper for the first time. The target kept climbing after that, to roughly 93 stations by the end of that year and 104 by last year, before August’s vote pushed it to 123. This week’s announcement is the first time that doubling language has been attached to stations actually running rather than stations merely approved on a county map.
Ridership gives some sense of what a denser network could carry. Boring Company executive Mike Baier said in July that the Vegas Loop already moves around 40,000 passengers on busy convention days, a total that tops most light rail systems in the country despite the system running on a fraction of its planned tunnel mileage. Company leadership has projected ridership could triple or quadruple once the airport connector tunnels fully open.
Boring Company did not say which stations beyond those already under construction would open by year end, or whether the hiring push points to a fleet expansion alongside the new stops.
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by Elon Musk
