TESTED 4.7.23, BEDFORDSHIRE ON SALE NOW
TESLA MODEL S PLAID
Pioneering electric saloon returns to the UK with 1020bhp for bonkers acceleration
TESTER’S NOTE
The odd name (said ‘plad’, not ‘played’) has nothing to do with Scotland but is instead a reference to Tesla boss Elon Musk’s favourite film, the 1987 sci-fi comedy Spaceballs.
IV
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 everydayusable saloon. That could easily be all the reason you need to buy one.