Elon Musk: Tesla Gets Battery, Electronics Upgrade To 'Ludicrous Mode'

Joann MullerForbes Staff

Tesla Motors TSLA +3.02% Chairman Elon Musk is promising even-better performance from the brand’s flagship Model S sedan, thanks to a larger battery pack and improved electronics that will enable the car to go 0-60 mph in just 2.8 seconds.

In the super-cool chairman’s vernacular, that’s “ludicrous mode.”

Here’s how Musk described the improvements in a blog post Friday:

While working on our goal of making the power train last a million miles, we came up with the idea for an advanced smart fuse for the battery. Instead of a standard fuse that just melts past a certain amperage, which means you aren’t exactly sure when it will or won’t melt or if it will arc when it does, we developed a fuse with its own electronics and a tiny lithium-ion battery. It constantly monitors current at the millisecond level and is pyro-actuated to cut power with extreme precision and certainty.

That was combined with upgrading the main pack contractor to use inconel (a high temperature space-grade superalloy) instead of steel, so that it remains springy under the heat of heavy current.

The net result is that we can safely increase max amp throughout from 1300 to 1500 Amps. If you don’t know much about Amps, trust me this is a silly big number of Amps to be going through something the size of your little fingernail.

What this results in is a 10% improvement in the 0 to 60 mph time to 2.8 secs and a quarter mile time of 10.9 secs. Time to 155 mph is improved even more, resulting in a 20% reduction.

This option will cost $10k to new buyers. In appreciation of our existing P85D owners, the upgraded pack electronics will be offered for the next six months at only $5k plus installation labor.

It is important to note that the battery pack size upgrade and the pack electronics upgrade are almost entirely independent. The first is about energy, which affects range, and the second is about power, which affects acceleration.

There is of course one speed faster than ludicrous, but that is reserved for the next generation Roadster in 4 years: maximum plaid.

New Model S buyers can now upgrade the pack energy from 85 to 90 kWh, which provides up to 15 miles of additional range, to just about 300 miles of highway range at 65 mph.

One other bit of news from Musk: The 70kWh version of the Model S in the single motor version is now $5,000 cheaper than the dual-motor 85 kWh car. For $70,000, there are enough standard options that even the base model is a great car, he said. Various purchase incentives bring the net price down to about $60,000. Owners will save an additional $2,000 per year on gasoline and servicing.Existing owners can also purchase the pack upgrade, but Musk advised them to wait for further improvements unless they are already maxing out the battery range on a regular basis. He said Tesla expects increase battery pack capacity by roughly 5% per year.