With a lap time of 7:35.579 at the famous Nürburgring Nordschleife racetrack in Germany, a Plaid Tesla Model S has set a new electric lap record. This is 7 seconds faster than the Porsche Taycan, and it's also competitive with the gas-powered competition.
Update: Despite being the slower of the two laps on the time slip, Tesla and the Nürburgring have declared that 7:35.579 is the official record.
The Nürburgring Nordschleife, also known as "The Green Hell," is a world-famous racetrack known for its appropriate length and technical difficulty. The Nordschleife ("North Loop") is over 13 miles long per lap, because most race circuits are 2-4 miles long per lap. The track winds through Rhineland forests on roads that are less flat and very well than current race circuits, with a mix of every type of twist you can think of (and lots of graffiti from the locals).
Many manufacturers use it to test the capabilities of new cars, to shake down cars and test if they can handle the high demands of racing – and to brag about their car's capabilities – as a result of this and its location in Germany.
Tesla has been testing their new product and setting records at the Nürburgring over the past few weeks, so we were expecting something shortly. Their achievement was announced by Tesla CEO Elon Musk's Twitter account today, along with a partial snapshot of the time slip:
The laptime and average speed are the most important parts of this photo, which does not offer much information.
The Nurburgring track is setup in several ways, and we can know from the time slip that this record was set on the longer 20,832 m configuration. Most laps are set on the 20,600 m configuration, which is a few seconds faster, and this configuration is only used in closed sessions. The track's “bridge-to-gantry” design, which is 19,100 metres long, is used for public driving sessions.
The Tesla claims to have completed two laps as well. We don't know if these were completed continuously or with a cooldown time in between, but the difference is only 5 seconds. This is amazing consistency (on such a long circuit), especially considering that electric cars have previously struggled to complete even a single lap. We experienced this early on with a Tesla Model S that couldn't complete a single lap under full power in 2014, and even the Porsche Taycan overheated on the Nordschleife's second lap. If the Plaid only noticed a 5-second difference between laps, that's not much of a power loss.
Even so, Tesla and the Nürburgring accept the faster laptime as the official record.
In comparison to other vehicles, the Model S Plaid's lap time of 7:35.579 is excellent (and the 7:30.909 even better). There are always disputes about what constitutes a record in a given car market – if a car is actually a production car, whether it was modified from the production, and so on – but the Plaid is in the same ballpark as the fastest comparable vehicles, whether gas or electric.
Last year, the 2020 Porsche Panamera Turbo set a time of 7:29.81 in the same longer configuration, leaving the Model S 6 seconds behind one of the world's most respected racing marques. This was the fastest lap time for a production full-size cars (also known as a "E-segment" car in Europe or a "executive car" in the UK) at the time, but the Mercedes AMG GT63 S posted a 7:27.80 lap time later that year. In racing, a second can count a lot, yet on such a long lap, these times are still very close.
The Jaguar XE Project 8 is still faster than each of these 4-doors, but it missing rear seats and hence does not fit into the same category.
As said before, the Plaid Model S exceeds the fastest electric competitor, the Porsche Taycan, which previously held the record for the fastest production electric four-door vehicle. Though that was set with the Taycan Turbo, not the Turbo S, so Porsche could still have some time on their hands.
Outside the 4-door category, the Model S Plaid's faster lap time even equals some sports cars with whom it has no business competing. The 2020 Chevrolet Corvette C8 set a time of 7:29.90, which is not far behind the Tesla's time.
Finally, there have been times when other electric cars have lapped faster than this one. In 2017, the $1.48 million NIO EP9 set a time of 6:45.90, which was faster than any production car ever made at the time, gas or electric - however it's unclear if the EP9 counts as a "production" car given that only 20 units were built. The Volkswagen ID.R, with a lap time of 6:05.336, was the fastest electric car to ever lap the track.
It's not the last time we'll see Tesla at the Nürburgring. Previously, a modified Model S set an unofficial time of 7:13 when testing the Plaid powertrain. Tesla believes that a time as low as 7:05 is possible. So it must be possible to get an electric sedan to lap the track faster than today's Plaid record, but we'll have to wait and see if Tesla, or anyone else, installs the updates or modifications that would allow for even faster lap times.
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