No, Tesla Can't Hit 60 MPH In Under 2 Seconds (Model S Plaid)

hello everyone and welcome in this video we're going to get unreasonably passionate about pointless statistics so we're talking about how tesla's model s plaid claims a 0-60 time of 1.99 seconds but in reality it more than likely doesn't actually have a 0-60 time of under 2 seconds and tesla's own website suggests this if you do a little digging here's the thing i really really like cool engineering and tesla does a lot of that i also really really don't like deceptive marketing and tesla well i'll let you finish the sentence so here's the problem if you go to tesla's website you'll see three options for the model s the long range with a claimed 0 to 60 of 3.1 seconds note that there is no asterisk next to this claim then the plaid with a 0 to 60 of 1.99 seconds again note that there is no asterisk next to this claim and finally plaid plus with a 0 to 60 of less than 1.99 seconds and again no asterisks next to this claim but what if you read the fine print well that pulls up a page which provides more details and shows you a side-by-side comparison of the different models turns out the 1.99 second claim actually does have an asterisk in the fine print and that asterisk which is a difficult word to say frequently reveals they're subtracting the first foot of rollout i have three problems with this first off most people don't know what rollout is and that's totally fine why should the masses know about some drag racing measurement method used by the national hot rod association or nhra the second problem i think it's quite deceiving how hidden this information is it should be shown on the main purchase page and third i find it a bit odd that they subtract rollout for the more expensive models but as there's no asterisk next to it presumably not the base model that helps differentiate them making the performance gap appear wider than it really is since subtracting a foot of rollout would probably put the base model in the twos all of this is just shady marketing in my opinion so let's talk about rollout theoretical 0-60 times what tesla's actual 0-60 time might be and what today's fastest 0-60 could actually be alright so first a quick recap on rollout so if you head to a drag strip and you've got two cars that are gonna race obviously they need to start at the same line right and so what drag strips have are these two light beams going across and you use those beams to line up the cars so first you'll hit a pre-stage beam that lets you know that you're very close to the line you're going to start from and then your tire rolls in front of that stage beam going across and you know hey i'm at the line i'm ready to launch down this drag strip now when they say go you have a little bit of time where your tire is moving forward and it hasn't yet broken that stage beam that beam in the front because the tire's moving forward and so it moves forward about a foot before the tire actually leaves that beam and that's when the zero to 60 clock starts actually ticking we're not talking about reaction time here we're talking about the car's actual 0-60 the timing starts once it breaks that beam which means you get one foot of free acceleration now the reason tesla does this is because this is what all the big auto magazines do and all of them know that this is deceptive the cool thing about the auto magazines versus tesla is that they actually openly admit what's going on behind this one foot so motor trend for example gives you the data of what happens in that one foot so what is the impact of that one foot of roll out and so for example with the tesla model s p100d that they tested it was able to accelerate to 5.9 miles per hour and that first one foot shaving .26 seconds off its zero to 60 time another example a mclaren p1 was able to accelerate to 5 miles per hour an event to door something a bit quicker than the tesla in that one foot 6.1 miles per hour and an example like a toyota camry it's able to accelerate to 4.3 miles per hour in that first foot so this is not a 0 to 60. in the case of the tesla it's more like a 6 to 60 which we can all agree 6 to 60 and 0 to 60 are very different measurements correct i think another way of phrasing this question like if you were to look at a car maker or a car maker told you hey our car can stop from 60 miles per hour down to zero miles per hour and 109 feet that's the number that motor trend got for the tesla model s p100d stops from 60 to zero 109 feet and then you're like you know actually that's from 55 miles per hour but we just said 60. you wouldn't be like okay that's fine you know it's they just took off five miles an hour so this the same should be true for the reverse right why are we talking about a 5.9 to 60 mile per hour time meaningless statistic we don't need it throw it out so what is the actual 0-60 if tesla's claiming that with their motor trend spec uh you know removing that first foot of rollout they're able to get 1.99 second zero to 60. well you know best case like this event to door that shaved off 0.2 seconds from its time so let's say something like 0.2 0.2 and suddenly our 0 to 60 in reality is more like 2.19 seconds now is it possible for the true 0-60 to be under 2 seconds for example looking at that plaid plus it says less than 1.99 seconds so this kind of ambiguous number we don't know what it really is is it possible for that to be under 2 seconds well what i like to do is look at the braking so the braking can teach us something basically the thought is a car cannot accelerate faster than it can break and i made a video about this about five years ago kind of breaking this down the simple logic is if you take a vehicle's braking distance from 60 miles per hour down to zero you find out what that braking distance is from that number you can determine what its deceleration rate is its average deceleration from 60 to zero that gives you essentially what your peak grip is and if you reverse that and then use that to calculate a acceleration using that g force from 0 to 60 miles per hour that can give you your theoretical limit of what could my 0 to 60 be and the reason being again i don't know of any car out there that can accelerate to 60 miles per hour faster than it can decelerate from 60 miles per hour down to zero it does not happen with road cars so why should you trust that well drag first of all helps reduce a 60 to zero time which means it would hurt your 0-60 time because drag is helping to slow that car down if you let off the gas pedal you just start slowing down aerodynamic drag starts to bring you to a stop and so that is helping reduce your 0 to 60 time that's an advantage you do not have accelerating the effect is small right 60 miles per hour isn't all that fast and not a lot of time is spent close to those speeds while accelerating also down force can help your sixty to zero now it could also theoretically help your zero to sixty but because the speeds are so low it's not going to be that much downforce really we're just talking about a little bit of added drag which is going to slow your car down not help it speed up on the flip side there are a couple advantages in accelerating versus braking usually cars that are very quick at accelerating have larger rear tires than front tires meaning the bigger tires have more weight on them while accelerating rather than while they're braking so that's an advantage to accelerating also i think it could be made the argument could be made that abs maybe isn't quite as fast to react as the most sophisticated electronic traction control system using an electric motor i think that could go either way but i think in reality you know it could be that an electric motor might be a little bit more sensitive and help provide the exact amount of force needed to not break friction and accelerate as fast as possible and then finally this logic does not apply to rockets right so in the future if they do end up putting a rocket on the back of a car well the traction now is no longer an issue right the rocket is what's pushing it forward not the tires and so you can have a 0 to 60 that is faster than two seconds or whatever the frictional limit of those tires are all right so let's look at a quick example using some data from motor trends so they tested a model s p 100 d they got a true 0 to 60 of 2.53 seconds and a 60 to 0 breaking distance of 109 feet using this 2.53 seconds we can do the mass say velocity equals acceleration times time and we can do the math to find out that that vehicle on average is accelerating at 1.08 g's now from that breaking distance of 60 down to zero of 109 feet we can do the math and figure out what is the average deceleration there which is 1.1 oh geez and as i mentioned earlier you can't out accelerate your braking right so the acceleration g-force is just slightly less uh than the peak braking g-force i i don't i don't think that is going to be reverse so your theoretical 0 to 60 in this case looking at the breaking g-force would be 2.48 seconds and the reality was 2.53 seconds so fairly close in predicting you know what's that 0-60 actually going to be and also not breaking a rule of you know decelerating uh quicker than you're accelerating now it's worth mentioning that this p100d was riding on michelin pilot supersport tires and there are better tires available today so that means more traction which means potentially a faster car so i did this little exercise back in 2016 and i said that based on the best stopping distance we saw of any production car which was 90 feet which means a deceleration of 1.34 g's the best 0-60 possible in a production car in the year 2016 would be 2.05 seconds now that was 2016. tires have gotten better since then great so actually if i were to predict today what is the best possible 0-60 well a 2018 porsche 911 gt2 rs was able to stop from 60 to zero in just 87 feet you can do the math on that that gives you an average acceleration of 1.38 g's or 44.5 feet per second squared which gives you a theoretical 0 to 60 speed over time of 1.98 seconds which is very cool because that's under two seconds so theoretically it is possible that today i believe a car could possibly hit production car could hit 60 miles per hour in under two seconds which is very cool so no production car has done it right no production car has gotten a 0-60 in under 2 seconds so that's why it's this really cool thing right now here's tesla claiming they can do it except there's an asterisk next to it and there shouldn't be an asterisk next to something that's cool it should be genuinely done so to tesla i would say at least you know at the very least put a little asterisk on the main page that says 1.99 uh like you do on the you know behind the scenes look of what the actual speed is or better yet put the actual 0 to 60 speed on it like you do for the base model or better yet actually get a 0 to 60 under two seconds and then we can all celebrate it could be legitimate from zero miles per hour to 60 miles per hour how cool would that be thank you all so much for watching if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below

Channel: Engineering Explained

Views: 666,671

Rating: 4.8334942 out of 5

Keywords: tesla, tesla model s, model s, model s plaid, tesla model s plaid, model s plaid+, plaid mode, plaid+, tesla model s plaid+, tesla 0-60, 0-60, fastest car, quickest car, engineering explained

Id: i7yigpPSu_o

Length: 11min 33sec (693 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/iTriMara]

Before you downvote, give it a watch, it’s well thought out and interesting science behind production vehicle acceleration theoretical limits.

[u/bestdriverinvancity]

Engineering explained is 10 minutes worth your time. This guy knows his stuff

[u/TheCommodore65]

The important takeaway here is that when we compare numbers of cars we need to make sure we are using a consistent measurement. Many people see 0-60 as Tesla's big claim against other cars so having the right numbers is important.

[u/juicius]

As an old ICE guy who used to think 6 second was the gold standard of any performance car, I can't even wrap my head around a sub 2-second 0-60. It's just inconceivable.

[u/asdlol68]

I'm honestly more impressed by the 9.23 1/4 mile than the 1.99 0-60, S Plaid will pull from 120mph to 160mph like a Performance pulls today from 45 to 80mph, i'm used to a 6 second 100-200kmh (62-124mph) with my 160 horsepower ktm 1290, the normal Plaid will do that in like 3.5 to 4 seconds, that's insane!

[u/mattinator1212]

Wow, lotta people didn't watch the video

[u/hoppeeness]

We shall see. It’s not the first car to claim it. But with rollout I assume.

[u/Meatface_Malone]

LOL more deceptive advertisements. I don't understand why. They're amazing cars, you don't have to deceive people into buying them.

[u/courtlandre]

Basically, Tesla added asterisks in the fine print and the claim is with 1 foot rollout subtracted. Tesla being shady... again because the asterisk is not on the main page.