Tesla?s Model S P85D?and its follow-up, the P90D?have been real inflection points in the development of electric vehicles, proving that pure EVs can be absurdly thrilling, with performance numbers that in some respects rival those of supercars. Yet a group of Tesla owners in Norway are miffed that the power ratings aren?t up to the numbers the California automaker initially advertised.
At the time of the vehicle?s introduction, Tesla claimed that the vehicle had a combined motor output of 691 horsepower. While semantically that?s true?at launch the P85D?s front motor was rated at 221 hp, while the rear was rated at 470 hp?the cars were rated by the sum of what their power sources can produce individually, not on what their powertrain does produce as a whole. The owners, who paid about $101,000 for their P85Ds (using today?s currency-conversion rates), allege that they paid about $16K extra to get what they thought was an additional 300 horsepower, but they only received 47 hp more than what the regular P85 then offered. Last year, the Scandinavian country?s consumer council stepped in as a mediator, and more recently Norway?s Consumer Dispute Commission ruled in favor of the Tesla owners. And now Tesla is in the process of contesting that ruling in an Oslo court, with the next hearing scheduled for December.
There are, by the way, a lot of Teslas in Norway. The country has the highest rate of electric-car ownership, per capita, in the world. At times, the Tesla Model ...