CEOInterviews.AITesla Model S Plaid: New Info from Chief Designer and Engineer

J

Jay Leno0:02

Doesn't feel like you're in a supercar.

L

Lars Moravy0:05

Oh, you are.

J

Jay Leno0:08

Okay, let's step on it right here.

L

Lars Moravy0:14

Yeah, you forget how fast this thing is.

J

Jay Leno0:16

Yeah, right. It's so sublime to drive every day, but then instantly.

L

Lars Moravy0:21

Yeah, I think you don't have to push a button. You don't have to do anything. It's just always right there.

J

Jay Leno0:26

I think you forget because it's such a good all-around car. Yeah, it's quiet and smooth and it's comfortable. And then, oh by the way, it's got 1,020 horsepower.

Welcome to another episode of Jay Leno's Garage. The vehicle we're featuring today, the latest version of the Tesla Model S. The fun thing about doing these is we get the man who designed it and the engineer behind it, Franz and Lars. Come on in, you guys. Good to see you again.

F

Franz von Holzhausen0:54

Hey, Jay.

L

Lars Moravy0:55

Morning.

J

Jay Leno0:55

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?

L

Lars Moravy1:03

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.

J

Jay Leno1:39

And that's what I find most impressive. I had my other Tesla nine years, and the pads look not brand new, but boy, pretty good. Because I do the one pedal thing, regen all the time. I was wondering about that because with carbon ceramic brakes before, you had to get them good and hot, literally degrees glowing red, to really stop. But this, they work in cold. Something like cold light, you know?

L

Lars Moravy2:05

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.

J

Jay Leno2:21

Now, this color looks new. I haven't seen this before. Is this new?

F

Franz von Holzhausen2:24

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 hints of this color. One of the times I came by before, 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. Back to the wheels. The wheels are, you know, we call them Valyrium wheels. They do a nice job of exposing our nice big carbon ceramic brakes and the huge caliper that's in red on the Plaid. So it's one of the visual cues that you get. But what's interesting about these wheels is they also come with caps that go all around for improved aero improvements. So you can decide if you want to have the caps on or off. It's up to you, but they come with the caps.

J

Jay Leno3:20,

By the caps, you mean?

F

Franz von Holzhausen3:23

Yeah, 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.

J

Jay Leno3:33

More range with them or without them?

L

Lars Moravy3:34

With them. Correct.

J

Jay Leno3:35

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.

L

Lars Moravy4:00

Interesting. Yeah, 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.

J

Jay Leno4:31

I had never heard of that, especially back in the day. I wouldn't have thought that was something back in the day.

L

Lars Moravy4:35

Back in the day, they were doing a lot of testing and figured out some smart innovator back then.

J

Jay Leno4:40

What else do we have here? I see some interior.

F

Franz von Holzhausen4:43

I mean, if we stay on the outside, if we start here in the front, for Plaid, for the first time, a Model S gets a unique front fascia. So this is a different look on the car for the Plaid. There's a unique rear fascia too, we'll cover, but added a splitter in the front and a unique shape around here that has a little bit bigger ducts on the side that again just pass air through the fascia around the wheel. And it just gives the Plaid now its own character, its own face.

J

Jay Leno5:14

And all these panel gaps seem much tighter than I remember.

L

Lars Moravy5:18

Well, you know, we've been improving quality over and over and over again. JD Power just noticed us. IQS went up like about 15 spots. So that's always a bonus. We've been building Model S for quite a few years. You know, 17 years ago, I started designing this car.

J

Jay Leno5:35

And it's basically hasn't changed that much.

L

Lars Moravy5:40

This is the biggest selling luxury car in this class, isn't it?

J

Jay Leno5:43

Still is. Yeah.

L

Lars Moravy5:44

Yeah. I mean, ahead of Mercedes-Benz and all the others. I mean, it's a lot of value for the car. You get basically a supercar. I mean, it is a supercar. Let's be honest. You're looking at 1,025 horsepower.

J

Jay Leno5:56

Still 1,020 horsepower. And like, 0 to 60 in under two seconds. With the brakes, you get a 200 mile top speed. It goes around the Nürburgring pretty fast.

L

Lars Moravy6:04

Quarter mile in 9.2.

J

Jay Leno6:06

Yeah, you did it.

L

Lars Moravy6:07

Yeah, I did it with mine.

J

Jay Leno6:09

Now, let's see how fast Tesla's Plaid four-door sedan can get me to the checkered flag.

L

Lars Moravy6:14

All right, Jay, this is on. You're ready to go.

J

Jay Leno6:16

Ready to go.

Wow, that's amazing. Curious to find out my score. So, let's see how we did. How do we do? Awesome. Look at that. What was it? 9.247. That's a world record, man. That was awesome. Woo! I didn't do anything.

L

Lars Moravy6:51

World record. There you go. How about that? Until somebody breaks it.

J

Jay Leno6:54

I'm sure there are easier jobs, but I can't think of any.

L

Lars Moravy6:57

It's pretty impressive. Yeah. But, you know, Franz is talking about the spoilers. The thing that I love from the performance standpoint is 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 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.

J

Jay Leno7:34

Something I like, and I don't know if this is deliberate or accidental. But with Tesla paint, if I scrape this or somebody hits me, we can color match this perfectly. Every other car would work with a color matching that's a little bit off and you got to do a bigger area to make it blend in. But with this, the Tesla blue that I have, you could not tell where the dent was.

L

Lars Moravy8:00

Well, there was no dent, right?

J

Jay Leno8:02

No, there was no dent. I mean, it's amazing. I guess it's because it's not a metallic. Is that why? Probably.

L

Lars Moravy8:09

Well, there's a couple things. One, we use all water-based paints, right? And that helps us. 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 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 an added bonus of being a little bit more sustainable, but it works.

F

Franz von Holzhausen8:50

I think we also spend time on developing the clear, the refinish recipe, do a lot about that, you know, 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: 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.

J

Jay Leno9:15

Yeah. Because I use my Tesla all the time. Run to the airport, whatever, and I come back. Well, when somebody's door hits it, you can't tell. It's pretty amazing.

L

Lars Moravy9:25

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

J

Jay Leno9:29

Well, no, I mean, it really is. It really makes it a joy. You're not just, you know, all these custom paints with this much metallic and you just go nuts.

F

Franz von Holzhausen9:38

Hard to see in here, but this has a metallic in it. And in the direct sunlight, it really comes out and pops and you get a really bright highlight.

J

Jay Leno9:46

Well, it does pop, but yeah, it's impressive. Okay.

L

Lars Moravy9:49

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, like 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 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.

J

Jay Leno10:27

Now, this has the yoke. Looks a little different. Is it the same one I have?

L

Lars Moravy10:32

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

J

Jay Leno10:38

And what is the yoke versus traditional steering wheel ratio? How many get this?

L

Lars Moravy10:43

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

J

Jay Leno10:50

Okay. Yeah. I got it on my own because I think it's like the split window in a '63 Corvette. This is cool. In the future, that's going to be the one you want.

L

Lars Moravy10:58

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.

J

Jay Leno11:10

Well, I like it because I can see the entire steering wheel. I have so many cars where I'm doing this at the cluster. Like red line is behind the steering wheel now. So, yeah.

L

Lars Moravy11:20

Very nice. No red line here.

J

Jay Leno11:22

What else is different about the front?

L

Lars Moravy11:24

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. It 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. So that's a cool addition. And then, as well, we have a brand new thermal system under here. 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 through the thermal system. 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. That's 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.

J

Jay Leno12:57

How far away are we from 100% charging all the time? Like I go to 80 on mine and battery lasts 12 years. I haven't had any problem with it. But do we see the future where 100% becomes 100%?

L

Lars Moravy13:11

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 in the original Model S, we were targeting, 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.

J

Jay Leno13:39

Should I continue to keep mine at 80?

L

Lars Moravy13:41

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

J

Jay Leno13:45

Right. Right. Okay. Very good. Okay. Yeah, it's no problem. It works fine.

L

Lars Moravy13:49

It's there when you need it, right?

J

Jay Leno13:50

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Franz, let's go back to styling. What else? Anything in the midsection here different?

F

Franz von Holzhausen13:56

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. And we're kind of dialing that in on this car.

J

Jay Leno14:34

Like I've got that Mustang GTD with that active aero stuff. Is that really effective on a road car at all?

L

Lars Moravy14:42

Active aero is super powerful for race cars, right? 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 60 and 100 miles an hour. 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.

J

Jay Leno15:09

Okay. And the Plaid emblem is standard now in all Plaid? Like when I got mine, it was one of the early ones and you got the first 25, you got the Plaid badge. Now everybody has one.

L

Lars Moravy15:19

Everybody has one. 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.

J

Jay Leno15:31

Oh, it's in the seats as well.

L

Lars Moravy15:32

You have a little Easter egg in the seat back. These are all new seats. There are sport seats for Plaid, bigger bolsters, just more comfortable.

J

Jay Leno15:43

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.

F

Franz von Holzhausen15:56

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.

J

Jay Leno16:24

And it looks tighter because you get better lines.

L

Lars Moravy16:27

Right. What also is new in here is ambient lighting. So we brought ambient lighting now to Model S. So you'll notice in the evening, you can see it here, this white light across the IP in the doors. It's infinite colors. You can tune it to whatever color you prefer while you're driving around. Even some Easter eggs that move and react when you're playing music if you so desire.

J

Jay Leno16:53

Did you ever entertain the idea of doing a two-door coupe?

L

Lars Moravy16:56

Oh man.

J

Jay Leno16:57

Did that ever come into the?

L

Lars Moravy16:58

Two-door coupe or the Roadster? Maybe.

J

Jay Leno17:01

Well, the Roadster, I guess.

L

Lars Moravy17:02

The Roadster is a... Okay. 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 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. Well, you know, it's funny when you talk to younger buyers, four-door, two-door doesn't make... Like to my generation, the two-door was always the cool one, the fast one. But I see so many young guys, they buy four-door Chargers with the big motor and all.

J

Jay Leno17:50

And I can get people in the back as a bonus.

L

Lars Moravy17:54

Yeah. It just seems like there's no downside.

J

Jay Leno17:58

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.

L

Lars Moravy18:07

Yeah. 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.

J

Jay Leno18:22

Speaking of the back seat, a couple of new cool features that you again don't see. Chase again, sorry, your car is getting a little age, but we increased the rear screen size from 8 inches to 9.2 inches. So there's a lot more space back here for the rear seat occupants. 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.

L

Lars Moravy19:02

You know, I've never sat in the back seat.

J

Jay Leno19:04

You want to sit in the back seat?

L

Lars Moravy19:05

Yeah. Let's play with it.

Yeah. So the back seat is really designed to be like a two-plus-two kind of configuration. So you notice you have bolsters too, right? And that's because we wanted everyone to have kind of their own seat. And one of the cool things here is you can actually move the front seat forward so you can get more leg room. And then the center console, you have like almost a front center console. You have two iPhone chargers here or phone chargers and your own cup holder. So when you put that down, the second row seat experience in the Model S has gotten a lot better.

J

Jay Leno19:49

Yeah. Very nice. Very good for four people and even a fifth when you need it.

L

Lars Moravy19:54

And wheelbase is the same. Obviously, track is the same. We didn't change those dimensions, but just a better improved second row experience overall.

J

Jay Leno20:07

Yeah. I've never been in the backseat of my car. I'm always driving.

L

Lars Moravy20:11

I mean, that's good.

J

Jay Leno20:12

Yeah. Very cool.

L

Lars Moravy20:15

And now you have full control here, right? You get, like I said, the front seat control, your own audio control, video, and then of course all the games you want to play. You can hook up controllers to play full video games. So you can be in your own little cocoon in the back seat.

J

Jay Leno20:32

Oh, very nice.

L

Lars Moravy20:33

That's why I bought one.

J

Jay Leno20:34

Yeah. Family kids.

L

Lars Moravy20:36

My kids are nine and 11, so this is perfect for them.

J

Jay Leno20:40

Well, should we check out the front?

L

Lars Moravy20:42

Yeah, let's do it.

J

Jay Leno20:44

I guess I'll stay back. You're right.

You know, visually this car looks tighter. I mean, the panel gaps.

L

Lars Moravy20:58

Yeah, we've gotten better at it over the years.

J

Jay Leno21:00

Very good.

L

Lars Moravy21:11

Let's go for a ride. Yeah.

J

Jay Leno21:20

I think you're starting to want one.

L

Lars Moravy21:21

Yeah, I'm very happy with mine actually. It's quite good. You know, we used to have the dynamic settings. You could choose your acceleration, you could choose your steering effort, you could choose the suspension height, and we've gone to this more like drive mode face thing where you pick comfort, standard, Plaid, and then we change everything all at once. So the acceleration, the steering efforts, the ride and handling, even the air suspension going up and down, is all balanced now. The car is now adapting to you. So we do things like when you're in Autopilot, it goes to comfort, right? Because we know you're not trying to drive like a bat out of hell or a banshee, so we just leave it in comfort. But if you want to drive that way, you switch it to Plaid. And we moved that to the scroll wheel so you can customize the scroll wheel if you want to just flip it all the time. Because a guy like me who likes to drive, a guy like you, when I get on the highway, I put it in full self-driving, stop and go traffic, I don't want to deal with it. But if I hit that last mountain road that's about a mile long right before my house, I switch it back into Plaid and then I enjoy the drive all the way up. So we did also put a lot of sound deadening in this car.

J

Jay Leno22:25

Yeah, it's surprisingly quiet. You can tell right away.

L

Lars Moravy22:28

I mean, just sitting in it, you can tell. One of the things I always challenge my engineers to do is like every next Tesla we release, whether it's a Model S or Model 3 or Model Y or Cybertruck, it should be the quietest one we ever built, right? And the S and X that we just updated are now the quietest Teslas we've ever built by a margin. They have the best road noise, they have the best impact noise, and they have the best acoustic transparency.

J

Jay Leno22:54

What's the highest mileage Model S you've seen?

L

Lars Moravy22:58

High. So we actually have... I mean, total miles? There's a few people that have gone over 500,000 miles from 2012. And with the original battery? Well, some, I don't know if all of them. Some of the early ones had some batteries replaced, but the guys that do that, they either have really long commutes or there's this taxi service that goes from LA to Vegas that has had quite a bit of miles as well.

J

Jay Leno23:28

Now, tell me about all of a sudden the administration got very anti-electric car in California. They've done away with the carpool thing. You can't use the carpool lane if you have an electric car anymore. Does that hurt you a lot?

L

Lars Moravy23:43

I mean, this is all happening in September. I think we've always focused on making great cars at affordable prices. And so, sure, the $7,500 that's going away is going to hurt us in North America. That's only like a third of our business. Tesla's international. We got cars everywhere. But a cool little tidbit in that that I don't think a lot of people know about is with that same bill, they passed an American-made car interest reduction. So you can take, just like your home loan, take the interest off the top and you get that money back. It's up to $10,000 on the loan. So we are the most American-made cars in the US.

J

Jay Leno24:20

How about if you bought a car for cash? Would you get it then? No, you don't.

L

Lars Moravy24:24

Well, no. This is just for loans, right? It's interest deduction. So it's not going to offset it completely, but it is nice that being American-made is helping us out there.

J

Jay Leno24:33

You know, one of my favorite little Easter eggs that we have in all our cars is Joe mode. You know that one, Franz?

L

Lars Moravy24:39

Yep. What is that? So, I just noticed it when the turn signal was on. It was a little louder than my car. Joe Gibbio is on our board and he asked us or Elon one time, he's like, 'I think these are really loud.' So we made a button called Joe mode, and it turns down all the little noises that the car makes from the indicators and stalks and everything else. But, of course, we called it Joe mode.

J

Jay Leno25:05

I wonder why most cars don't allow you to use the rear view camera when you're moving. I think it's a great asset. I honestly think it's probably because they don't have an integrated MCU, media control unit, you know? So they're relying on a third party to give them the camera and then they have to go access that software. Whereas for us, it's all just one thing. And now with the Model S and we have the three cams, you can see this view where you have the rear and the sides, or you can flip it to the front. I don't know why you would want to do that while driving, but you can see the front camera. But it's kind of fun. So that's the front camera, rear camera. It's a bigger view than you can see from the mirrors, you know? It's a 180 degree field of view camera. So some people complain about their focal length changing from looking down the road to having to look at a screen and back. You don't get that on a mirror, but otherwise it does give you a better field of view. And the blind spots, too, are great.

Doesn't feel like you're in a supercar.

L

Lars Moravy26:10

Oh, you are.

J

Jay Leno26:13

What are some other things that are different about this car?

L

Lars Moravy26:16

Yeah, I mean, we were just talking about the seat, but I think that's one of the things that is an advantage of being at Tesla and designing our own seats. We can do things and explore things like changing the bolsters and separating the seat pad like we were talking about earlier that other car companies just have to have a long life cycle to do. They would never do that in a mid-cycle update like this, right? And because we have our own seat factory and stuff like that, we can do it all, which is super awesome. Same thing with the ambient lights that we put in there. That's like a plug-and-play thing for us where it's like, okay, let's just add this feature.

J

Jay Leno26:54

Okay.

L

Lars Moravy26:55

Sorry, I lost my head there.

J

Jay Leno26:58

Need a warning so you can put your head back.

Feels about the same as mine. Not much difference, is there?

L

Lars Moravy27:03

I mean, the car is a little lighter with the carbon ceramics and the wheels. We're talking about 30-40 pounds. But yeah, maybe it's not quite noticeable, but the performance is just a little bit more.

J

Jay Leno27:33

So this is where I really feel that suspension update, especially in the rear seat.

L

Lars Moravy27:37

Yeah. Because we just went over that bridge and there's the up and down from the bridge. In the old Model S Plaid, we would be kicking up and down in the back. I would be bouncing. But because we were able to soften that rear end up, I got a really smooth ride. And I think, you know, you said you've never been in the backseat of a Model S, but for those of us with families that have one, it really makes it a lot better.

J

Jay Leno27:59

How often do people use the self-driving?

L

Lars Moravy28:02

You know, it's increasing a lot. The take rate has gone up from single-digit percentages on all our cars to we're in the teens now. On S and X, it's over 50-60%. And we have a lot of people that use it in these cars on every drive. You can get addicted to it really quick. You get in, you put your destination in, one click, and you go. You don't even have to start the car or do anything right from park. I think there's just a lot of people that don't really realize how good it is. They maybe heard about it from somebody else that tried it 5 years ago. It's all, 'Oh, it's only okay.' But now it's so much better, improving on a weekly basis. Once you try it, you realize how good it is and how convenient it is. And it's actually way safer than you're self-driving. I've heard so many people tell me that they're kind of converted after they try and they realize that it's just driving safer than they ever would, especially with all the distractions that we have in our lives. By our data, we know it's an order of magnitude less incidents or accidents, which is great. And so that's always the number one reason we push it. It's for safety. And now with our robo taxi service that we just launched in Austin a couple months ago and the Bay Area, autonomous ride hailing, it's just showing how much farther it's coming. It's going to be an exponential change in that, I think. But the cool thing is if you have a Tesla, you have it in your car now. You can do it and use it. And I think it takes a lot of mental strain off the daily commute.

J

Jay Leno29:48

What tires on these? Cup 2 tires?

L

Lars Moravy29:50

These are not the Cup 2s. These are Michelin PS4S tires. If you get the full track package with the track wheels, you get Cup 2s. And those are the tires we ran at the Ring with. Actually, it's a Goodyear. We changed that to a Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar, which is similar to the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2, but it was specially designed by Goodyear for us, which is pretty awesome. And it looks badass too.

J

Jay Leno30:20

Yeah, I like the new brakes. And it's a $20,000 option, though, isn't it?

L

Lars Moravy30:24

With the wheels. Yeah.

J

Jay Leno30:26

Do you do a special Michelin tire for this or is it just a standard tire?

L

Lars Moravy30:32

No. Every tire we make is specifically designed for Tesla. So it's got to have the rolling resistance and all that.

J

Jay Leno30:38

Yeah, it's got to have the rolling resistance, the noise, the ride.

L

Lars Moravy30:41

And even still, the way that an electric vehicle loads a tire is different because the center of gravity is so low. When you have those lateral movements, normally when you design a tire in an ICE or another car, you get vertical load that pushes down on the outside tire and then you can increase your cornering power with that vertical load. But we don't get that much weight transfer because we're so low. And so we had to redesign the sidewalls to be a little bit stiffer so that they could increase their lateral capability without the vertical load increase so much. And that's a whole different way of thinking about how a tire works. But that's why we design our tires with our vendors, with our suppliers, jointly to make sure that it works as best as it possibly can for the car you're driving.

J

Jay Leno31:28

So you meet with Toyota, they'll drive the car, just give their assessment.

L

Lars Moravy31:32

Yeah. I mean, if we're talking to whether it's Michelin or Goodyear or Pirelli or Hankook or Continental, all the major tire suppliers, we're meeting with them regularly. They come out, they test with us. We work with the tire designers. We actually have a couple of former F1 tire designers on our team. They make the most complicated tires in the world. And so we wanted to make sure we had the best of the best engineers. And the gains that those guys and girls have been able to make over the years are pretty impressive. When we came out with the Model S, the original rolling resistance on that tire was probably somewhere around 10 or 11 kg per ton. Now our best tires are down around 5-5.5 kg per ton, but they still have the same lateral grip and the same longitudinal performance. This car stops in under 100 feet, 60 to zero.

J

Jay Leno32:25

You know, the car just looks better. It's like its posture is better.

L

Lars Moravy32:29

Yeah. Stance is better.

J

Jay Leno32:30

Stance is... it looks a little bit wider than all the lines.

L

Lars Moravy32:37

I mean, everything is much better. In the old days, they'd have a different body every year and consequently nothing is ever right. You know, this car has really been penned 17 years ago. It hasn't changed fundamentally since then. We've done little design tweaks and we've done a lot of refinement, a lot of improvement. We've made the dynamics better, the battery is better, the motors are better, the drive unit is better, all the stuff underneath the skin is better. But all the aluminum panels haven't changed since we started production, except when we went to a wider stance on this version of the car for the rear wheels. We just wanted more grip in the rear. So we ended up pushing the...

J

Jay Leno33:24

Do you have in your head what the next design language will be?

F

Franz von Holzhausen33:28

We've been working on a lot of the future design language in the studio and it will be emerging soon. I'm super excited about it. But this is, you know, there's something about the longevity of this car that's kind of iconic really.

L

Lars Moravy33:46

Yeah. In a way, through the refinements, it's just gotten better. And a lot of people say, 'Oh, the first version is always the best version or whatever.' But this car for me, this version is the best version of this car.

J

Jay Leno33:59

Yeah. The latest one. I remember friends from we were talking with Jay at the Petersen some months ago and we were talking about when we first met. I was back then I was like suspension, wheel, tire design. And one of the things I said when I first looked at the clay, I remember standing next to Franz and I was like, 'Needs bigger tires.' And that's one of the moments you and I maybe started bonded.

L

Lars Moravy34:24

We bonded in that moment. And we eventually got there with the 2021 update, but now I think we've gotten even a little better with tightening up the gaps and pulling the air over the tire down and the track tires, they look even cooler.

J

Jay Leno34:40

Okay, let's step on it right here.

L

Lars Moravy34:43

Oh, this thing is fast.

J

Jay Leno34:49

Can feel the fluid in my eyeballs.

L

Lars Moravy34:57

Never gets old.

J

Jay Leno34:58

Yeah, you forget how fast this thing is. Yeah, right. It's so sublime to drive every day. But then instantly, you don't have to push a button. You don't have to do anything. It's just always right there.

L

Lars Moravy35:11

I think you forget because it's such a good all-around car. It's quiet and smooth and it's comfortable. And then, oh by the way, it's got 1,020 horsepower just waiting for you to use it, all the way up to top speed.

J

Jay Leno35:25

Yeah. That torque curve goes right to top speed, right? Power curve. Torque curve still drops out a little bit because that's a function of RPM and power, but power stays flat all the way to top speed, which is incredible.

L

Lars Moravy35:40

Oh, it's great. Just boom, you're right there. You know, one of the things I just noticed that popped up, the suspension actually senses the roughness of the road and it'll raise the vehicle when the roads are rougher. So it just popped up and I thought it was cool.

J

Jay Leno35:57

My seat belt light. Where's that seat belt light on?

L

Lars Moravy35:59

Oh, it's my hand.

J

Jay Leno36:00

Sorry, I'm pushing down on the seat because you're driving so fast.

L

Lars Moravy36:04

Oh, I see.

J

Jay Leno36:05

I love the sentry mode when they catch people keying the car, right?

L

Lars Moravy36:09

Yeah. And people have no idea that that's there.

J

Jay Leno36:12

You think they would have figured that out by now? Enough people have been caught.

L

Lars Moravy36:16

You know, from your app, you can get warnings that people are doing nefarious behavior, right? And now we added the megaphone from the app. So you can go on your phone and be like, 'Get the hell away from my car.' Or I like how you integrated, with Sylvio's team, ordering the food from the diner, right? I mean, I've worked at Tesla 16 years now. I've owned many Teslas, own Model 3, Model Y, Cybertruck. But when this car came out, it is the first time I bought a Model S because I think it's just the best Tesla we've ever made. Hands down.

J

Jay Leno36:52

I agree. Well, I'm very happy with mine. It's never really been to the dealer for anything really. I find it to be unbelievable. I never had any problem at all.

L

Lars Moravy37:05

Consumer Reports came out with that one too. I'm full of stats, guys. Teslas are the lowest cost to maintain over four years, even lower than Toyota and anything else.

J

Jay Leno37:13

Yeah. So, no trips to the gas station, no trips to the service center, just ready to go every time you get in the car.

L

Lars Moravy37:24

With your own personal chauffeur.

J

Jay Leno37:26

Exactly.

L

Lars Moravy37:26

Full self-driving.

J

Jay Leno37:27

Full self-driving is your own chauffeur.

Do you think they would ever put an onboard compressor so one could add air to your tires?

L

Lars Moravy37:36

We do sell the one that goes in the trunk. We do have the compressor for the air suspension. But it's really slow fill because it's different volume ratios. In the Cybertruck, we have one that goes in the bed. It fits in and it plugs in and it's kind of integrated that way.

J

Jay Leno37:56

Now, if you were redesigning the Cybertruck today from brand new, would you make it smaller? Does it seem big?

L

Lars Moravy38:03

Cybertruck does not seem big. It's actually slightly smaller than an F-150. People always think it has this presence, but it feels like you park it next to an F-150. It's one inch shorter. So it can fit anywhere that you can fit.

J

Jay Leno38:20

A little narrower too.

L

Lars Moravy38:22

Exactly. And a little less tall. So on its own without context, maybe it seems big, but in reality it's actually the right size.

J

Jay Leno38:36

Well guys, thanks for coming by. You know, I always love it when they come by because you get it right from the horse's mouth. It's the guy who designed it and the engineer who built it. So there you go. See, there's no marketing guy in the middle.

L

Lars Moravy38:47

That's right, Jay. With you, we always get it straight from the horse's mouth. And it's really fun and exciting. I love my Model S. This is the best version.

J

Jay Leno38:57

And you bought one because you think it's the best version of a Model S ever built.

L

Lars Moravy39:01

Well, I got to agree. It's incredibly fast. These new brakes, if there was any problem with it, it was never a problem, but the fact that these brakes are so far superior, I can actually match the car's 200 mph top speed. So, good work. Good work, gentlemen. Thanks. It's always a pleasure when you come by and I hope one day soon to see the new Roadster. I'm very excited about that.

F

Franz von Holzhausen39:27

Coming soon.

L

Lars Moravy39:28

We promise you, Jay, we will bring it here first.

J

Jay Leno39:31

I was a young man when I first thought about getting...

L

Lars Moravy39:35

So are we.

J

Jay Leno39:36

Yeah. So, very good. Well, cool.

L

Lars Moravy39:37

It's like a fine wine, aging well.

J

Jay Leno39:40

Yeah. Well, congratulations, guys. Nice work.

L

Lars Moravy39:42

Always a pleasure. Thanks for having us.

J

Jay Leno39:44

And we'll see you guys next time.

L

Lars Moravy39:45

Yes.

J

Jay Leno39:46

More Tesla updates to come.

L

Lars Moravy39:47

That's right.

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

About Lars Moravy