Hacked Tesla Model S Plaid clocks 216 mph

When Tesla first announced the Model S Plaid it promised a truly groundbreaking performance and a 200 mph top speed. They delivered on the performance promise for sure but the top speed never really materialized. First cars had 163 mph top speed and that was bumped up to 175 mph with the recently released Track Mode. It took a Canadian tuning company to fix that situation.

Tesla must have good reasons for not allowing its customers to unleash the full power of the car. There are few reasons we all are aware of - like the notorious under powered brakes that Tesla now offers to replace with $20,000 optional carbon ceramic items. It can be the fact that battery and electric motors struggle with cooling at those speeds and at some point the company tried saying there are no tires that would cope with the speed.

There were many doubters who simply didn’t believe Tesla could achieve that speed. Today those doubts were put to rest and Tesla S Plaid has not only achieved 200 mph but it went at 216 mph and it would have kept on going if it didn’t run out of road - or airport rather. It needed 6,000 ft to scrub that speed off despite running upgraded carbon brakes.

It wasn’t Tesla though who achieved this result - it Canadian tuning company Ingenext based in Quebec that took its own Tesla S Plaid and hacked it in order to bypass the speed restrictions. Ingenext is known for its modules that help Tesla owners unlock car’s features and performance.

The CEO of the company was behind the wheel of the test car and as soon as the 3 km (1.8 mile) runway at the local airport was closed he made the glorious run. Interestingly once the speed went over 200 mph mark it turned red. The only modifications on the car were upgraded brakes from Mountainpass Performance and Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires - and the Ingenext module of course.

This is the very first time we see Tesla S Plaid achieve and actually beat its promised top speed. Ingenext is promising to release its speed module soon after more testing is concluded. Here is a video from the record run shared by our colleagues from Electrek:

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