Tesla Model S P100D Revealed – 380 Mile Range and 2.7sec to 60mph. Officially the World’s Quickest Accelerating Production Car

How do you one-up Ludicrous mode? If you are Tesla you announce that you are releasing a 100-kwh battery pack for the Tesla Model S and Model X and that this change means 315 miles of all-electric range and acceleration that blows the doors off any other production car on earth.

The Model S P100D will start at $134,500 and the Model X 100D will start at $135,500, but Model S and Model X P90D owners can upgrade their battery packs for $20,000. If an owner has already ordered a P90D but hasn’t taken delivery, they can spend an extra $10,000 for the extra power and range. Tesla says the extra $10,000 goes to recycling the old battery pack.

“This has been a very difficult development,” Musk said to reporters, “going from roughly 90 to 100” was “more like a 50-percent increase in difficulty.” He also said that the battery’s complexity will lead to low production numbers.

With a new 0-60 mph time of 2.7 seconds it’s hard to argue that this is the new benchmark in terms of acceleration times for a production car. Sure you can count both the Porsche 918 Spyder and Ferrari LaFerrari as being faster, but let’s get serious here. Those cars are $1MM+ limited edition hypercars whereas the Tesla is a car anybody can buy (reasonably speaking of course).

Tesla mentioned that the 100 kWh pack has the same number of cells as the 90 kWh pack but is designed and cooled more intelligently. This means that the battery came to fruition through painstaking efforts and re-engineering and not just by making it larger. This is some hard engineering then.