Tesla P85D Better Than Perfect: Consumer Reports

Describing the car’s acceleration as “brutally quick,” the magazine’s testers added some details:

[T]he P85D is the quickest car we’ve ever tested, needing just 3.5 seconds to go from zero to 60 mph. And the P85D delivers 1.02 g’s of horizontal accelerative force in less than a quarter second. … A quarter second is basically as quick as you can twitch your fingers to start and stop a stopwatch. And the only other approximate sensation to the P85D’s sudden jarring force is jumping off a building. That’s not hyperbole. That’s fact.

After a gush like that, what else can the testers say? Well, for one thing they note that the running costs for the car for 200 miles of travel works out to less than $0.05 per mile. Of course a well-equipped P85D will cost north of $125,000 to purchase.

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The P85D’s scores on some cabin features were a bit more down-to-earth. Interior fit and finish were rated “excellent,” as was the cabin’s noise level. But rear-seat comfort was rated just “good” and controls and displays were rated “fair.” Safety ratings were all “excellent,” and there are no reliability ratings yet because the car has not been available long enough.

Tesla’s stock traded up about 4.6% early Thursday, at $235.10 in a 52-week range of $181.40 to $291.42.