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A checkered Tesla Model S set a new electric lap record at the famous Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit in Germany, with a time of 7: 30.909. This beats the Porsche Taycan’s time by almost 12 seconds and is also quite competitive with the gasoline competition.
The Nürburgring Nordschleife, also known as the “Green Hell”, is one of the most famous circuits in the world, known for its exceptional length and technical difficulty. While most racing circuits are 2-4 miles long per lap, the Nordschleife (“northern loop”) is almost 13 miles long per lap. The track winds through the Rhine forests on roads that are less flat and less well maintained than modern racing circuits, with a combination of every kind of turn imaginable (and plenty of graffiti from the locals).
Because of this and its location in Germany, it is used by many manufacturers to test the capabilities of new cars, to shake up vehicles and see if they can handle the extreme stresses of racing – and to boast about the capabilities. from their car.
Tesla has been at the Nürburgring for a few weeks testing their new product and making record attempts, so we expected some news soon. Their achievement was announced today on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter account, with a partial photo of the jet lag:
This photo doesn’t contain a lot of information, but shows the most important elements: lap time and average speed.
The Nurburgring track has several configurations, and looking at the time difference we can say that this record was set on the longer 20,832m configuration. This configuration is only used in camera, most laps being set to the 20,600m configuration which is a few seconds faster. For public taxiing sessions, the track uses the “gantry bridge” configuration which is 19,100 m long.
Compared to other vehicles, the Model S Plaid’s 7: 30.909 ride compares very well. There are always arguments about what constitutes a record in a particular automotive segment – whether a car is in fact a production car, whether it has been modified from stock, etc. or electric.
The 2020 Porsche Panamera Turbo set a 7: 29.81 last year on the same longer setup, putting the Model S just 1 second behind the 4-door model of one of the world’s most respected racing brands. At the time, this was a record for a full-size production car (also known as the ‘E-segment’ in Europe or ‘executive car’ in the UK), but later that year- there the Mercedes AMG GT63 S completed a lap of 7: 27.80. time. A second means a lot in the race, but on such a long lap those times are almost identical.
There’s an even faster 4-door than any of them, the Jaguar XE Project 8, but it doesn’t have rear seats, so it doesn’t really fit in the same category.
As mentioned above, the Plaid Model S also beats the fastest electric competitor, the Porsche Taycan, which previously held the fastest 4-door electric production record. Although this was fixed with the Taycan Turbo, rather than the Turbo S, Porsche could therefore still have a little extra time in its pocket.
Stepping out of the 4-door class, the Model S Plaid’s trick even fits some sports cars it doesn’t have to compete with. For example, the 2020 Chevrolet Corvette C8 set a 7: 29.90 – but we believe it was on the shorter 20,600m configuration, which would give the Tesla a lead of a second or two.
And finally, there are other electric cars that have driven faster than this one. The $ 1.48 million NIO EP9 set a 6: 45.90 in 2017, which was faster than any production car ever made at the time, gasoline or electric – although we can debating whether or not the EP9 counts as a “production” car when only ~ 20 units have been built. And the fastest electric car to hit the track was the Volkswagen ID.R with a 6: 05.336.
Looks like the Tesla did two laps as well. We don’t know if these were done one after another or with an intermediate cooldown, but there is only a 5 second difference between them. It’s a relatively good consistency (over such a long lap), especially since the electric cars have struggled to complete a single lap before. We saw this early on with a Tesla Model S in 2014 that couldn’t complete a single full-power lap, and even the Porsche Taycan overheated on its second lap of the Nordschleife. If the Plaid only saw a 5 second variation between turns, that’s not much power loss at all.
It might not be the last time we see Tesla at the Nürburgring. Previously, during tests of the Plaid powertrain, a modified Model S had set an unofficial time of 7:13. Tesla even thinks a time as low as 7:05 am would be conceivable. So it must be possible to get an electric sedan to go faster on the track than today’s Plaid record, but we’ll see if Tesla, or someone else, rolls out the updates or changes that could facilitate even faster lap times.
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