News
Porsche Taycan win against Tesla Model S is suspicious, says veteran drag racer
Just recently, motoring publication Top Gear posted a video comparing the Porsche Taycan Turbo S to the Tesla Model S Performance. The publication featured a drag race between the two vehicles which ended with the Taycan taking the win from the Model S. The quarter-mile race seemed to be a clean win for the Porsche, but according to a veteran drag racer, there are some aspects of the race that were, to say the least, suspicious.
Brooks of DragTimes has extensive experience on the drag strip, being the owner of vehicles like the McLaren 720S and the new Ford GT. With a garage filled with high-performance cars and innumerable straight-line races under his belt, Brooks knows a thing or two about drag racing. His experiences with his Model S P100D also make him a veteran Tesla owner who knows all the quirks of the all-electric sedan inside out when launching from a straight line.
With this in mind, the veteran drag racer noted that there seems to be several things that are wrong about the results of Top Gear‘s quarter-mile race between the Porsche Taycan Turbo S and the Tesla Model S Performance. The motoring publication listed the Model S’ 0-60 mph time at 2.68 seconds, its 0-100 mph at 6.46 seconds, and its quarter-mile time at 11.08 seconds at 124.0 mph. The DragTimes host noted that this immediately rings some alarm bells, as the Model S Performance is known to clock 10.6-second quarter-mile times regularly.
But it gets stranger. Looking at the figures listed by Top Gear after the two vehicles’ drag race, it appears that the publication basically copy-pasted the exact same performance figures of the Model S from a race against a Mercedes AMG E63S from 2017. This, according to Brooks, is highly suspicious, since the chances of a vehicle having the exact same 0-60 mph, 0-100 mph, quarter-mile time, and trap speed in two different drag races are incredibly thin.
Apart from this, the DragTimes host argued that the Model S which raced against the Taycan Turbo S did not seem to be in Launch Mode. This is because the Model S squats when Launch Mode is engaged, something that did not seem to happen in Top Gear‘s video. The motoring publication did not seem to engage the full capabilities of Ludicrous Plus Mode as well, as the graphics on the vehicle’s MCU and instrument cluster do not feature the same settings as a Model S with its maximum performance enabled.
Top Gear noted that the Porsche Taycan Turbo S completed the quarter-mile in 10.69 seconds, which is 0.39 seconds faster than the Model S’ 11.08-second quarter-mile time. Brooks noted that in drag races, a 0.39-second gap would usually correspond to about four car lengths. This is pretty odd since in the Top Gear video, the Taycan Turbo S was only one car length ahead of the Model S Performance when it crossed the quarter-mile mark.
If the DragTimes host’s observations are correct, then it means that Top Gear misrepresented the Tesla Model S in its recent comparative video against the Porsche Taycan Turbo S. This is unfortunate, as the two vehicles are actually neck-in-neck, and they do feature quarter-mile performance that can make an exciting drag race. The Porsche Taycan Turbo S is a great vehicle too, and its two-speed gearbox will likely give it an advantage over the Tesla Model S Performance at high speeds.
Simply put, the Porsche Taycan Turbo S is a worthy competitor that has the potential to win against a Raven Tesla Model S Performance with Launch Mode and Ludicrous Plus fair and square. Misrepresentations, whether intentional or not, only do Porsche an injustice. The Model S deserves better, and the Taycan Turbo S does too.
Watch Brook’s breakdown of Top Gear‘s Porsche Taycan Turbo S vs Tesla Model S Performance drag race in the video below.
Tesla has officially launched public Robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, without a Safety Monitor in the vehicle, marking the first time the company has removed anyone from the vehicle other than the rider.
The Safety Monitor has been present in Tesla Robotaxis in Austin since its launch last June, maintaining safety for passengers and other vehicles, and was placed in the passenger’s seat.
Tesla planned to remove the Safety Monitor at the end of 2025, but it was not quite ready to do so. Now, in January, riders are officially reporting that they are able to hail a ride from a Model Y Robotaxi without anyone in the vehicle:
I am in a robotaxi without safety monitor pic.twitter.com/fzHu385oIb
— TSLA99T (@Tsla99T) January 22, 2026
Tesla started testing this internally late last year and had several employees show that they were riding in the vehicle without anyone else there to intervene in case of an emergency.
Tesla has now expanded that program to the public, but it is currently unclear if that is the case across its entire fleet of vehicles in Austin at this point.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
The Robotaxi program also operates in the California Bay Area, where the fleet is much larger, but Safety Monitors are placed in the driver’s seat and utilize Full Self-Driving, so it is essentially the same as an Uber driver using a Tesla with FSD.
In Austin, the removal of Safety Monitors marks a substantial achievement for Tesla moving forward. Now that it has enough confidence to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis altogether, there are nearly unlimited options for the company in terms of expansion.
While it is hoping to launch the ride-hailing service in more cities across the U.S. this year, this is a much larger development than expansion, at least for now, as it is the first time it is performing driverless rides in Robotaxi anywhere in the world for the public to enjoy.
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Elon Musk shared an incredible detail about Tesla Cybercab’s potential efficiency, as the company has hinted in the past that it could be one of the most affordable vehicles to operate from a per-mile basis.
ARK Invest released a report recently that shed some light on the potential incremental cost per mile of various Robotaxis that will be available on the market in the coming years.
The Cybercab, which is detailed for the year 2030, has an exceptionally low cost of operation, which is something Tesla revealed when it unveiled the vehicle a year and a half ago at the “We, Robot” event in Los Angeles.
Musk said on numerous occasions that Tesla plans to hit the $0.20 cents per mile mark with the Cybercab, describing a “clear path” to achieving that figure and emphasizing it is the “full considered” cost, which would include energy, maintenance, cleaning, depreciation, and insurance.
Probably true
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026
ARK’s report showed that the Cybercab would be roughly half the cost of the Waymo 6th Gen Robotaxi in 2030, as that would come in at around $0.40 per mile all in. Cybercab, at scale, would be at $0.20.
Credit: ARK Invest
This would be a dramatic decrease in the cost of operation for Tesla, and the savings would then be passed on to customers who choose to utilize the ride-sharing service for their own transportation needs.
The U.S. average cost of new vehicle ownership is about $0.77 per mile, according to AAA. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft rideshares often cost between $1 and $4 per mile, while Waymo can cost between $0.60 and $1 or more per mile, according to some estimates.
Tesla’s engineering has been the true driver of these cost efficiencies, and its focus on creating a vehicle that is as cost-effective to operate as possible is truly going to pay off as the vehicle begins to scale. Tesla wants to get the Cybercab to about 5.5-6 miles per kWh, which has been discussed with prototypes.
Additionally, fewer parts due to the umboxed manufacturing process, a lower initial cost, and eliminating the need to pay humans for their labor would also contribute to a cheaper operational cost overall. While aspirational, all of the ingredients for this to be a real goal are there.
It may take some time as Tesla needs to hammer the manufacturing processes, and Musk has said there will be growing pains early. This week, he said regarding the early production efforts:
“…initial production is always very slow and follows an S-curve. The speed of production ramp is inversely proportionate to how many new parts and steps there are. For Cybercab and Optimus, almost everything is new, so the early production rate will be agonizingly slow, but eventually end up being insanely fast.”
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Tesla Earnings Call: Top 5 questions investors are asking
