Tesla Model S Plaid: New Info from Chief Designer and Engineer | Jay Leno's Garage

Yeah, you forget how fast this thing is. Yeah, right. It's so sublime to drive every day, but then instantly.

Yeah, it's quiet and smooth and it's comfortable. And then, oh by the way, it's got 1,020 horsepower.

Hey, Jay. Morning. Well, I see some impressive things right off the top. Those brakes, is this the optional package? Is it still optional or is it standard now on this?

Well, these are our carbon ceramic brakes. We've had them optional for a while, but now we put them on there as, you know, like with the package when you get the car and then you can deselect them. So it's like a forced option, right? But the cool thing about the brakes is, you know, most carbon brakes, they really don't get their temperature. They don't get their mu until the temperature goes up. When we developed these, we developed a continuous carbon matrix so that the mu, and that means the stopping power, is there from cold because, you know, when you drive a Tesla, you don't really use the brakes that much. And so we wanted that bite to come in right when you hit it when it's cold. And that's what these brakes do. And they're pretty cool. And they look cool, too.

Something it's like cold light, you know exactly. It's like cold light, they work at any temperature. And you know, they weigh about 15 kilos less than the other brakes, so it's like 35 pounds. So you get a little weight cut which helps also with rotational inertia, which gives you just a little bit on that 0 to 60 run, maybe 0.1 or 0.2 seconds.

Yeah, this is a new color. It's our sixth color now for Model S. It's a frost blue. And you know, you may have seen like hints of this color. One of the times I came by before, you know, I'd actually designed the color and we put it out in public in broad daylight. I wrapped a car, a Model S, and would drive it over here sometimes. And it was basically the idea around this color. So we actually put it into production now. It came out great.

By the caps, you mean around the spokes, there are triangle-shaped caps that go around. They're not featured on here, but they help improve the air flow and the aerodynamics, so you can get a little bit more range.

With them. Correct. With them. Okay. You know, it is funny. I have a Lagonda over there. It's a Le Mans car, and to cut the big brake drums, there's a hole in the center and in that hole there is an aluminum cup that fits in the hole. And I'm told you would think it would run cooler with the holes exposed and the air would circulate, but actually the cups are there to cool it. Interesting.

Yeah, I mean the aerodynamics around a wheel are pretty complex. For flow, you want the air just to come around the outside and go by. That's what Franz is saying about the caps that you insert, and then it goes by and it gives you about 10 counts of aero, just a couple one or two percent of range. But when you're trying to cool a brake, you want the air to come in. The balance between getting the outer surface to let the air go by and then sucking the air in is probably what the Lagonda guys were doing way back when, and it's what we do here too with the caps.

Well, you know, we've been improving quality over and over and over again. JD Power just noticed us. IQS went up about 15 spots. So that's always a bonus. Yeah, we've been building Model S for quite a few years. You know, 17 years ago, I started designing this car and it's basically hasn't changed that much.

Yeah, I did it with mine. Now, let's see how fast Tesla's Plaid four-door sedan can get me to the checkered flag. All right, Jay, this is Ron. You're ready to go.

But, you know, Franz is talking about the spoilers. The thing that I love from the performance standpoint is like when we added this, we were able to balance the lift front to rear a little bit more because, you know, when you're going that fast, obviously the aerodynamics of slip and trying to keep it efficient versus the aerodynamics of trying to keep the rear end down when you're going fast kind of contradict each other a little bit. But adding these spoilers and making them unique, it helps us keep the lift balance such that the rear stays down and the front stays level so that when you're going 200 miles per hour, you aren't losing control and taking load off those rear tires.

Probably. Well, there's a couple things. One, we use all water-based paints, right? And that helps us because when you have an oil-based paint, it tends to vary more color to color or batch to batch. The water-based paints definitely help us. This particular one is a solvent-based paint. And when we do that, we also don't end up with a slightly softer clear coat because the water just can't accept the same temperatures. And that softer clear coat means when you're blending, when you're preparing, you get a little bit easier spread. Whereas if you have a really hard like 2K clear coat, you end up with this like, okay, now I've really scuffed off the clear and I got to go feather it in. It's like an added bonus of being a little bit more sustainable, but it works.

Yeah, very good. I think we also spend time on developing the clear, the refinish recipe, do a lot about that right up front. So we're designing the paint for the factory but also the refinish so that you get basically what you're hinting at, that if you end up having to refinish, the recipe is the same. It's a different technique, but the recipe ends up being the same. So it's really easy to blend.

Well, I'm glad you noticed. Yeah, those paint engineers do a lot of work.

Yeah. So back on the lift balance, we were talking about how we were able to increase the balance from front to rear, which actually means that the springs in the rear can get softer. And so what we were able to do on the base car as well is we're able to completely redesign the rear suspension. We changed the bushings, we changed the springs, we changed the dampers in order to take advantage of that aerodynamic benefit and make the car even more compliant and fun to drive and comfortable at all speeds while still being able to go super super fast on the track. And that's one of the things I think has been really unleashed by getting the new styling and getting it unique for Plaid. So that's super cool. You don't see that, but it happened.

Same yoke. I just upgraded the stitch pattern to deal with the wear.

Yeah, on Plaid it's about 50/50. And on the normal car it's about 70/30.

Yeah. But also, if you're using full self-driving, autonomous mode, then you really don't need a full wheel at all. It just gets in the way. So the yoke is great. It just moves out of the way.

Well, in the front we have the front fascia cam which we added, first with the Cybertruck and then the Model Y and now it's here. That really adds to the overall full self-driving system that Franz was talking about. Gives you a little bit more view in the front because there's kind of a blind spot here that these dual cams at the windshield can't see. It also helps when you're manually parking. If you want to pull up just to the edge, you turn on the front fascia cam, you see it right there. You know when you're going to hit the curb or not hit the curb, right? So that's a cool addition. And then as well, we have a brand new thermal system under here which is inside there. It's called our Super Manifold version two. One of the things that we try to do with our vehicles is always increase the real world range relative to the sticker range. So while the sticker range on this car is up about 8 miles, same on the Long Range car which is now 410 miles, we've also closed the gap on our real world range from let's say 10% off of what the sticker says to maybe 6 or 7%. And we did that primarily not only through efficiency gains in the aero, but primarily through the thermal system. And what that Super Manifold V2 does is it has an improved thermal conductivity of the manifold which is now cast aluminum and used to be forged aluminum. And that allows us to have a more efficient cooling and heating of the entire powertrain and therefore improving our overall real world range, which is super cool for customers because we've always strived to make sure our cars get the most range possible, but really we want real world range to be as good as possible.

Yeah. So all of our lithium iron phosphate batteries already go to 100%. They have great lifetime energy. When we started with the nickel batteries which original Model S, we were targeting like and we had warranties out there to save like 10-15% after 8 years, and we've really made improvements over time to bring that up. We have some new battery cell technology that's coming out shortly where we've closed the gap to lithium iron phosphate by like half. And that means where you're charging to 80, maybe now we're charging to 90 on the nickel batteries, which is super great.

Yes. I mean, that's the battery cell you have and that's what we would recommend.

Basically, the car is the same since we actually started producing the car in the midsection. The front and the rear is where we really made the changes over the years. And as we go to the back, you'll see there's a new spoiler, new rear diffuser and the Plaid badge. But the rear diffuser, combined with the spoiler and the front splitter, is what Lars was talking about to get that lift balance and optimum performance. And again, it's a balance between efficiency and high-speed performance.

Active aero is super powerful for race cars, right? Like they outlawed it in F1 and it's super powerful for supercars when you get up to that high speed. But when you think about the breaking point between efficiency and lift balance, it occurs somewhere maybe depending on the vehicle, anywhere between like 60 and 100 miles an hour. And so you're really not making too much compromise for daily driving. But if you're going to drive the car like a bat out of hell, it's probably worth having some.

Oh boy. So much for egalitarianism. Yeah. But we've taken that a step further. When you get into the interior, you'll see we expanded the Plaid badge and put it in the seats.

Oh, I see. Right here. Yeah. Very nice. Right. And it's a good balance between everyday driving and comfort and real performance driving with bigger bolsters that don't necessarily get in the way, but they're there when you need them. One of the cool things about the seats is this is our new modular architecture where the bolsters are actually trimmed separately from the seat cushion itself. It sounds like, why would I want that? But actually, what it allows you to do is really have two kind of cushion positions. So if you lower the cushion and you want to get into track driving, you really hunker down. The bolsters stay where they are and they kind of squeeze you a little more. And when you lift it up, you get a little bit outside the cushions. You get a little bit more comfortable. It's like a transformative seat just in one. And it looks tighter because you get better lines.

Oh man. Did that ever come into the two-door coupe or the Roadster? Maybe. Yeah. Well, the Roadster, I guess. The Roadster is a...

Yeah. But the lights are super cool. They're dynamic in this car. As Franz was saying, they play with music. They have entry sequences, but all their other lights are sort of static. These ones can change and fade in and out and move all around and do all kinds of things. There's also a big challenge from Franz to us was like you didn't want to see the light. So when the lights are off or the door is closed, you have just a bright trim there. It looks like the silver color. It's called a dead front. So when the lights are off, you don't see anything. There's no gap. There's no anything.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it used to be a downside, right? But now, with the way that powertrains are developed, especially in the EV space, you can get everything and it's super cool. I mean, look, this car still has a lift gate. You can fold the rear seats down. It can be, you know, you can put a ton of stuff in this car if it's just two people or if you need to go to Home Depot or IKEA, grab your stuff, or put five adults in here. Speaking of the back seat, a couple of new cool features that again you don't see. Chase again, sorry, your car is getting a little age, but we increased the rear screen size from eight inches to 9.2 inches. So there's a lot more space back here for the rear seat occupants, right? But also, we added a feature, and this is for all the families out there, especially like us, Franz and I have young kids, where people in the rear seat can watch a movie or listen to whatever they want on Bluetooth headphones and you in the front seat can have your own entertainment going on on the radio. So when you're going through the Grand Canyon, you don't have to look at those mountains. You can watch a Looney Tune tuned into the TV.