TESLA MODEL S PLAID

Pioneering electric saloon returns to the UK with 1020bhp for bonkers acceleration

- ILLYA VERPRAET

TESTED 4.7.23, BEDFORDSHIRE ON SALE NOW

No matter how jaded you may be by acceleration, the Tesla Model S Plaid takes pushing you back into your seat and flinging you at the horizon and turns it into an event to remember. Given a sufficiently long track, it takes off and doesn't let up until it hits its 160mph limiter, with no hesitations, no gearchanges and virtually no noise. It somehow feels like a different order of speed to even a Porsche Taycan. What scrambles your mind is that this isn't some exotic hypercar, it's an everyday-usable saloon. That could easily be all the reason you need to buy one.

And buy one you now can - with some caveats. You're stuck with left-hand drive, and it's £113,480 before options, though that almost seems cheap when compared with anything else that's similarly rapid.

The Plaid has a 421bhp motor at the front and two 414bhp motors at the rear for a total of 1020bhp. You will note that those numbers don't add up: that's because they're limited by the amount of power the circa-100kWh battery can supply.

This head room does mean that power can be directed to wherever the software deems fit, thereby enabling some torque vectoring.

Apart from that, the Model S has received a subtle facelift and a completely new interior.