jason fenske whiteboard

Engineering Explained breaks down Tesla 0-60 claims

Jeff Glucker

/comment

Comments

Professor Fenske is here to break down the physics and math for you. Tesla claims its new Plaid and Plaid+ tri-motor-equipped Model S sedans will go from 0-60 in under two seconds. That’s a bonkers figure from a company used to doling out bonkers figures. But this one wears asterisks…

If you’re familiar with the sort of car testing typically done by the buff books, you know all about the concept of a rollout. This practice accounts for the first foot a car moves when it leaves the line. It’s a practice related to the timing beam lights used at a dragstrip. Fenske covers this at the beginning of his video, but to sum up, this practice essentially allows for quicker times than a vehicle delivers if you start the timer as soon as the throttle is pushed to the floor.

Tesla is accounting for a rollout to hit its sub-two second 0-60 times. So the cars are still insanely quick, but just not quite as quick as advertised. The engineering and physics at play here are rather amazing. A Tesla Model S Plaid has a curb weight of 4,766 pounds. It can run from 0-60 in the low two-second range. It’s… wild.

And if you care about 5 or 6-60, it will do that in under two seconds.

About

Jeff Glucker

Jeff Glucker

Jeff Glucker is the co-founder and Executive Editor of Hooniverse.com. He’s often seen getting passed as he hustles a 1991 Mitsubishi Montero up the 405 Freeway. IG: @HooniverseJeff

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The maximum upload file size: 64 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop files here

3 responses to “Engineering Explained breaks down Tesla 0-60 claims”

  1. OA5599 Avatar
    OA5599

    The standard pre-stage and staging beams at a dragstrip have nothing to do with measuring 0-60 mph; they only measure elapsed time to a particular distance at which there is another set of beams (60 feet, 330, 660, 1000, and 1320, plus some speed beams 66 feet before the 1/8 and 1/4 mile lights). The dragstrip’s timing system is a good way to measure the car’s time to travel the measured distance (plus rollout), but it is not equipped to determine the exact instant a moving car reaches a precise velocity (indeed, since the lights measure the average speed the car travels during the final 66 feet of the track, the results are less accurate, and likely lower, than measuring the speed the car travels in the last foot of the track).

    Instead, 0-60 mph times are measured with some other apparatus (GPS, or accelerometer, or on-board systems, or a bicycle wheel, for instance) for which rollout really isn’t appropriate. Edmunds, for instance, feels the same way.

    https://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/features/how-we-test-cars-and-trucks.html

    Reply
    1. outback_ute Avatar
      outback_ute

      Agreed. Zero in 0-60 means zero speed, why does there need to be ifs and buts?

      Too bad when it gets translated into 0-100 km/h, it will likely be over the 2 second mark either way.

      Reply
  2. Zentropy Avatar
    Zentropy

    In Science, the way you justify your claims is by diligently seeking information that disproves them. Success means you fail to prove yourself wrong.

    In Marketing, the way you justify your claims is by diligently hiding information that disproves them. Success means everyone fails to prove you wrong.

    I hate Marketing.

    Reply