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After announcing yesterday Tesla's new "Plaid Powertrain," Elon Musk said Tesla had another prototype of the 7-seater Model S.
After the recent launch of the Taycan Porsche, Musk seems to have the mission to show that Tesla vehicles remain the most efficient electric vehicles available to date.
Last week, he said Tesla would bring a Model S to the Nurburgring race track – just after Porsche set a new four-door electric car record on the track.
Musk later said the Model S was on the track in Germany, but it looks like they will not be able to make a record this week.
Instead, they turned their gaze to the house and broke a record on the Laguna Seca circuit with a prototype, Model S.
Yesterday, Tesla announced that the Model S that broke the Laguna Seca record this week had a new "Plaid Power Package" and a new "chassis prototype".
Now, Musk is talking about another new feature or version for the Model S.
The CEO says that the prototype of the Model S in Germany has 7 seats:
The Nürburgring Model S has 7 seats
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 12, 2019
What the CEO means by that is not entirely clear since Tesla once offered rear-facing seats for Model S children, making it technically a 7-seater.
However, Tesla could not speak of 7 seats as the rear-facing seats were reserved for children. So they call it "5 + 2" and they ended up breaking the feature.
Musk has explicitly stated that the new prototype of the Nürburgring Model S has "7 seats" to "carry 7 people", which could mean that its configuration is different from that of the rear-facing seat.
It is believed that Tesla has brought several new S model prototypes with its new powertrain on the Nürburgring circuit for testing in the coming weeks.
Electrek's Take
It would be pretty sneaky for Elon to talk about rear-facing seats.
I think he's talking about a new 7-seat full configuration for the Model S. It's not impossible to imagine since Tesla managed to squeeze a third row of Model Y.
However, I do not see why.
It was still the domain of Model X. If you want a Tesla with a 7-seater configuration, you can order an X model instead of a S model.
I really do not see a major market for a 7-seater performance sedan, but correct me if I'm wrong.
On another note, the image presented (from Autoblog) is one of the prototypes of the Model S that Tesla imported to the Nürburgring – maybe even Elon, a seventh person, talks about it.
But what I find interesting is the 'P100D +' badge. This is probably a reference to the new Plaid powertrain, but Tesla is moving away from the P100D badge or any other badge referring to the energy capacity, so I'm not sure what's going on here.
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