Review: Tesla’s new Model S P85D—double your engines, double your fun

In its December 1997 issue, Road & Track published the first US road test of the otherworldly McLaren F1. The issue became one of the most famous in R&T’s history due to the 12+ page review of a car with which the stateside automotive press hadn’t yet had a chance to spend a few days of unchaperoned time. I can still remember the awe I felt learning daily-driver details about the famous 240mph Lamborghini destroyer. The review, done with a privately owned F1 on loan to the magazine, contained superlative after superlative; I remember reading with wide eyes about how the F1’s 627bhp BMW-built V-12 could rocket the car from 60 miles per hour to 160 miles per hour in the time it took to pour a glass of water.

"Surely," I thought as I read and re-read the review with the fervor that only a teenage boy could have for the hottest of hot cars, "I’ll go my whole life and never get the chance to drive anything even remotely that fast."

Turns out I was wrong—I had to wait 18 years.

Now, I’m not saying the Tesla P85D is anywhere near the rarefied territory occupied by Gordon Murray’s immortal McLaren hypercar (and if I were crazy enough to think that, Cars Technica editor and British expat Jonathan Gitlin would stab me in the face). The F1 is a limited-run, hand-built marvel that cost a million dollars new and featured an engine compartment lined with gold foil to deal with the exhaust heat from that earthshaking BMW V12. It’s the kind of car teenagers buy posters of.

In contrast, the P85D isn’t hand-built; it’s mass-produced by robots. It won't top 200 miles per hour. It doesn’t have gold foil. Your teenager probably won't buy a Tesla poster.

But the Tesla does have the power to beat the McLaren F1 off the line, run dead even with it to 60 miles per hour in 3.2 seconds, and hit the quarter-mile mark only a few tenths off of the McLaren’s 11.1 seconds. And it does so in spite of being almost exactly twice as heavy as the McLaren, at 4,930 lbs versus 2,513 lbs (2,240kg versus 1,140kg).

The Tesla Model S P85D accelerates so ludicrously hard that it’s almost difficult to believe the car is a production model vehicle and not something Elon Musk built to win a bet. "Hey," the car’s sleek-but-not-exotic lines seem to say, "I’m just a mild-mannered sedan. Come on in. Pay no mind to the 'insane' button on the dashboard—it won’t hurt if you mash the pedal."

And then you do and the 680-something pound-feet of torque bangs your head against the head rest. The front window goes to star-lines like an X-wing jumping into hyperspace. You realize that the noise you’re hearing isn’t the squeal of tires or the howl of an engine—it’s you, laughing, with an edge of hysteria to the giggles because this is the only possible response your body can make to the shock of acceleration.

The first question everyone asks when they find out I’ve had some cockpit time in the P85D isn’t about the car’s range, or its build quality, or the interior, or the handling, or how charging works. The first thing everyone asks is, "So…is it really fast?"

Yes, it is. It is really, really f----ing fast.

There’s more to the P85D than just speed, of course, just as there was more to the first-gen Tesla P85+ we reviewed at the end of 2013. Both are great cars. The bad news, though, is that while the Model S is a great car, it’s not necessarily a great $130,000 car. Let's dig in.

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Specs at a glance: 2015 Tesla Model S (P85D)
Body type	5-door
Layout	Dual motor, all-wheel drive
Powerplant	3-phase AC induction motor (2x)
Transmission	Single speed reduction gear (2x)
Horsepower	221 bhp (165kW) (front) 470 bhp (350kW) (rear)
Torque	244 lb-ft (front) 443 lb-ft (rear)
Steering	Variable-ratio rack & pinion (electric)
Suspension	Double wishbone front, multilink rear, pneumatically adjustable height
Tires	Goodyear Eagle RS-A2 front and rear 245/45R19 (all season, V-rated)
Top speed	155 mph (250 kph), software limited
Battery	85 kWh lithium ion
Rated max range	253 miles (407 km) @ ~300 wH/mile
Internet connectivity	3G (complementary, no cost)
Weight	4,936 lb (2,239 kg)
Wheelbase	116.5 in (295.9 cm)
Dimensions	196 in (497.8 cm) x 77.3 in (196.3 cm) x 56.5 in (143.5 cm) (LWH)
Warranty	8 year, "infinite mile" battery and drive unit
Base price	$105,000
Price as tested	$129,950
Options added	Obsidian black metallic paint, all-glass panoramic roof, 19" Silver Cyclone wheels, black next-generation seats, glossy Obeche wood decor, carbon fiber spoiler, autopilot convenience features, premium interior lighting, smart air suspension, ultra high fidelity sound, executive rear seats, subzero weather package, and destination and regulatory documentation fee

I’m not going to run through the history of Tesla Motors’ Model S—for that, consult our previous Model S review. The short recap is that making electric cars is one of Elon Musk’s two main day jobs these days (the other being making rockets and spacecraft at SpaceX). Musk is shaping up to be some kind of crazy real-world amalgam of Tony Stark and Wilton Knight, making cars and rockets and spaceships ultimately because he feels like it.

For our first Model S review in 2013, the questions we had were primarily about whether the Model S was a good car, rather than just a good electric car. There are a small but growing number of electrics on the road in the US today—most notably the so-ugly-even-its-mother-hates-it Nissan Leaf—but very few of them are particularly good cars. They typically compromise range or usability to make their electric tech work, their value proposition is pretty stunted even with the fuel savings, and on top of that they’re bland and anonymously terrible to drive. The Model S, though, was just fun as hell to spend time with. It’s just not winning any awards for value even with all the electricity-related cost offsets.

Still, the Model S we got to spend a few days with in 2013 had some rough edges that might have been forgivable in a $60,000 car but that were really tough to get over at double the price. The interior was sparse and felt cheap in a lot of spots, with the seat in particular being bad. The car also lacked the laundry list of tech features you’d expect to see in a high-end luxury sedan. Showing the car to friends while I had it elicited an odd mixture of "That’s amazing!" and "That’s stupid!" as folks who had never seen the car before learned about its highs and lows.

The good news for would-be Tesla customers is that the updated Model S we put 500 miles on last week addresses some of the criticisms we had last time around while maintaining roughly the same price range. Tesla Motors deserves praise for evolving the design so much over the past two years—as of right now, all Model S versions except one come with two motors by default and have greater range and a much richer list of features (including dormant self-driving abilities) than the cars available at the end of 2013. The cars have also gained titanium underbody armor at no cost. And even cars from 2013 continue to benefit from ongoing software updates like the recent "Range Assurance" update.

Exterior and stuff

To most observers, it’s difficult to tell the difference between a 2013 60-kWh base model Model S and a new 2015 P85D without peeking at the car’s badging. Tesla Motors has maintained a homogenous exterior design over the car’s production life—and with good reason, since the car’s exterior has an extremely low drag coefficient of 0.24 to help range.

But there are differences. For one, all of the 2015 model P85Ds come with fancy red brake calipers (though if you don’t like the flash you can deselect that feature in the store). New Teslas also have a cutout on the front, just above the spoiler, for the adaptive cruise control’s radar. The newer cars are also studded all around the midline with little round ultrasonic transceivers that are used not just when parking but also while driving to detect the position of cars all around you.

Signature design features like the Maserati-style snout and the distinctly Jaguar XF-like rear are carried over unchanged, as are the crowd-pleasing (and aerodynamically friendly) retractable door handles. The overall effect looks like a New World homage to a whole range of Old World marques. It’s a handsome car and it looks competently fast, but it doesn’t really stand out in a crowd—it’s more Audi A8, less Audi R8.

The car also keeps the LED "eyelashes" surrounding its HID headlamps, which make it a little easier to distinguish from the pack when looking at it dead on (the car’s face otherwise quite honestly reminds me of the current-gen Ford Fusion).

Unlike our 2013 press fleet car, our 2015 P85D loaner was a sales demo car used for customer test drives (which are actually appointment-only "experiences" here in Texas because of the state’s strict pro-dealership franchise laws). This meant that it was loaded up with almost every option except for the big 21" performance tires—presumably to save the local showroom some consumables costs, since anecdotal reports from the Tesla Motors user forum indicate the soft Z-rated 21" Michelin Pilot P2 OEM summer tires last far less than 10,000 miles of spirited driving. Instead, our car was shod with harder 19" Goodyear Eagle RS-A2 all-seasons (245/45R19 all around, instead our last car’s mix of 245/35R21 fronts and 265/35R21 rears), mounted on some upgraded wheels.

We were a little worried that the combination of smaller tires and almost 70 percent more power would result in a harder-to-control car, but we didn’t have any issues at all either running errands around town or on our long road trip. In fact, the smaller tires likely contributed to a quieter cabin this time around.

The inside: expectations versus reality

If you’ve had occasion to sit in a luxury sedan in the price range we’re talking about here, then you know that regardless of manufacturer the "butt in seat" experience tends to be, shall we say, "cushy." The first time around, the Model S interior did not measure up to the same standard set by other cars in the class. There are reasons for this—not the least of which is that the Model S’ price includes a considerable R&D premium that is being used to fund the development of Tesla’s battery gigafactory and future cheaper electric vehicles—but it’s still difficult to sit in a six-figure car and look at cheap creaky plastic where another car would put beautiful leather or hand-polished wood (or at least a carbon fiber veneer).

Let’s start first with the P85D’s seats, because those were one aspect of the car universally hated by reviewers far and wide. Last time, the seats looked nice but lacked reasonable lateral support and left you unanchored and sliding when taking the car through a corner. They also weren’t terribly comfortable over long drives.

Tesla now offers what it’s calling "Next Generation" seats, which are a complete turnabout from its freshman efforts. They’re visually beefier, with fixed head rests recalling a Recaro-style performance seat, and they’re also wonderfully padded and bolstered. Support is excellent, and they keep you nicely held in place through the twisties so that you don’t have to rely on a steering wheel death grip to avoid sliding around (which is good, because the car still lacks "oh shit" handles for the front and rear passengers). The only thing about the seats I disliked were the fixed head rests, which are annoyingly high.

The soft Alcantara covering material from the pillars and roof has also spread to many more locations inside the car, now swaddling parts that used to be optional extras in its velvet-like wrapping. It also now covers part of the dash; I can’t decide if the effect is visually pleasing or confusing. It’s definitely nice to touch, though, and it adds some class to the dash that was previously missing.

The dash-dominating 17" touchscreen is still there—and still a mixed ergonomic bag. With a passenger present to fiddle with the controls, it was quite nice, though on some occasions it felt like there was a lot of input lag when calling up certain displays. The lack of physical controls on the dash is partially offset by the ability to do a lot of things on the steering wheel (including climate control and audio system control), but many folks are still going to find the touchscreen more flashy than functional.

The absolute most annoying design oversight from our first Model S has been blessedly addressed: the cruise control stalk (which came straight out of the Mercedes parts bin, along with most of the rest of the Model S’ interior controls) has been removed from its place above the turn signal/wiper stalk and redesigned from scratch to work with the Tesla’s updated adaptive cruise control. Most attempts at engaging the turn signals on the first Model S resulted in a grab at the cruise control stalk, and I never really got used to reaching underneath or around the stupid thing to get to the turn signals. This fix is most welcome.

The rear seats this time around are also of the premium variety, eschewing a bench layout for a more molded three-seat style. This is an optional feature and one I liked while actually in the back seat, but otherwise could have done without. While the seats are comfortable, they also have fixed head rests that obscure a large percentage of the Model S’s already-narrow rear window view. Selecting the executive rear seating also prevents you from being able to select the optional foldaway rear-facing seats, so if you want those for your kids, you’ll have to make a choice.