Tesla drivers who used to drag Porsche Turbos can once again exploit their explosive acceleration, but only thanks to a Model S owner in Mesa, Arizona.
The man, who chooses to remain unnamed, has chronicled his frustration with Tesla since mid-May, when he posted a letter from the Arizona attorney general’s office on the Tesla Motors Club forum. His complaint, well known among Tesla drivers?including ourselves as testers of a long-term Model S?was a sudden and significant drop in motor power when accelerating in Insane or Ludicrous modes. It was enough for the man to file a lawsuit in small claims court, alleging that Tesla illegally altered his car’s performance (the Ludicrous option package that he paid for) without his knowledge or consent. Finally, after months of obfuscation by the automaker, Tesla owners can terrify their passengers as they did when their cars were new. In a routine software update sometime in 2016, Tesla reduced the peak power of every all-wheel-drive Model S. Before we turned in our long-term 2015 Model S P85D, we ran it through our full battery of tests as we do for all long-term cars over their 40,000-mile stay. The results were plenty fast, but markedly disappointing: Our initial zero-to-60-mph run was delayed 0.4 second (to 3.7), and the quarter-mile added half a second and a 2-mph-slower trap speed (12.3 seconds at 112 mph). This wasn’t an issue with weather, our test driver, or our particular car. It was because of Tesla up...