Tesla CEO Elon Musk elicited quite a bit of skepticism when he boasted in June 2017 that the electric automaker’s next-generation Roadster would be able to accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour in under two seconds — a feat that Musk said would make the vehicle the “fastest production car ever.”
Now, a Tesla test driver is saying Musk’s boast might have even been “conservative.”
“I think I can say without getting in trouble that those are actual figures,” says Emile Bouret, who says he’s test-driven the new Roadster.
“Those aren’t theoretical. Those aren’t calculations. We’ve done those numbers,” Bouret says in a video interviewposted to the VINwiki YouTube page on Tuesday. “And I probably shouldn’t say that those numbers are even conservative, but they are.
“That thing is going to be a proper weapon.”
The new sports car is not expected to be available until 2020, but experts have already voiced reservations about the new Roadster’s so-called “Maximum Plaid” speed mode.
A mechanical engineer at YouTube channel Engineering Explained even made a video in November arguing that no car tires can get enough traction to go from zero to 60 mph faster than 2.05 seconds, while other experts suggestedthere would need to be advancements in tire technology in order for the Roadster’s speedy feat to take place by 2020.
Tesla’s Model S sedan with “Ludicrous Mode” has been timed going from zero to 60 mph in under 2.3 seconds, while Porsche’s 918 Spyder is considered one of the world’s fastest at 2.2 seconds.
But Tesla’s upcoming Roadster update may have them all beat, according to Bouret.
Bouret, a college roommate of Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen, says he drove the Roadster prototype when Tesla debuted it in November. He suggests the skeptics should “have faith” and that anyone who loves cars should be rooting for the new Tesla Roadster to break the mold and become one of the fastest cars ever made.
“I’m definitely rooting for them, because the world will be a better place if that car does get built and it does get on the road, because other people are going to build cars to beat it,” he says.
There is, of course, a down side to speed. On the same day the Bouret interview was posted, federal investigators said on Tuesday that a Tesla Model S involved in a deadly crash in Florida in May was traveling 116 mph only seconds before it crashed into a wall.
Tesla did respond to a request for comment on the Roadster test drive by the time this story was published.
h/t DoctorBraveStone