Watch A Tesla Plaid Take On Lucid Air Sapphire And Bugatti In An Epic Drag Race
Regardless of what you may think of Tesla, Elon Musk, or a litany of other things, there is one indisputable fact: the Tesla Model S plaid is fast. There's no debate or fighting in the comment section of numerous car blogs. It's startlingly quick to accelerate and smashes most automotive records by its mere existence. It has three electric motors that generate 1,020 horsepower to all four wheels and puts out 1050 foot-pounds of torque (via Hagerty). That's more torque than a new diesel heavy-duty truck.
The Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport is also incredibly fast. It's the stripped-down, racing version of the Chiron, that can accelerate itself from stationary to 60 miles per hour in 2.3 seconds. Bugatti's entire point of existence during this period in automotive history is to be faster than any other car and car-like object on four wheels. It costs several million dollars and has a quad-turbocharged sixteen-cylinder engine the size of a house that sends 1,479 wild French horses to all four wheels. When it comes to internal combustion cars, the Chiron is the pinnacle. Even the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon can't conjure up enough speed magic to beat the Bugatti.
It's been thought that the Tesla Model S Plaid is the quickest accelerating car on the planet with a real-world 0-60 time of 2.1 seconds. The trimotor 1200-plus horsepower Lucid Air Sapphire also accomplishes the same feat in 2.1 seconds. Who is truly faster off the line? There's only one way to find out: on the track.
The track doesn't lie
Hagerty took a Tesla Model S Plaid, a Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport, and a Lucid Air Sapphire out to a racetrack to cut through all the hyperbole and marketing finesse to find out which car is truly faster. When it comes to sheer acceleration, the Lucid and Tesla are neck and neck, with the Lucid inching out a victory by three hundredths of a second, according to Hagerty. Comparatively, the Bugatti was just there for fun as it did a four-wheel when its 8-liter engine roared to justify its own existence. But over the course of the quarter mile, the Lucid won by over a car length, putting both the Model S Plaid and the Bugatti in the time-out corner.
The Lucid Air ran the quarter mile in 9.1 seconds at 156 miles per hour, making it the quickest car you can theoretically go out and buy today. That just barely beats out the Tesla which completed the quarter mile in 9.3 seconds at 152 miles per hour. Not to be outdone, the Chiron Pur Sport eventually ripped past the Tesla and achieved second place in the drag race by a little over six feet.