Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - An Inside Look at the Tesla Model S Plaid!

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

This week, Marques took delivery on his Tesla Model S Plaid, so we thought we'd change up the format a bit and actually record the podcast inside the new car! While enjoying that intoxicating new-car smell, we check out the fit and finish, several new design choices, and of course the yoke steering wheel! Then, we answer a few questions from our listeners and yes, don't worry: there is assuredly audio & video of Marques bringing Andrew and Adam on a 0-60 test! Links: Subscribe to the pod & share with friends: http://bit.ly/WaveformMKBHD Subscribe to the pod on YouTube for full videos: https://bit.ly/WVFRMPodcastYouTube https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/AdamLukas17 https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Uncertainty. Self-doubt. Stressing about not knowing where to start. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Word art. Sorry, live laugh lovers. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. All right, welcome back to the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew.

And, well, if you're watching the video version, straight up, this is going to look a little bit different because we're in a different place. If you're listening to the audio version, it probably is going to sound a little different too. Yeah, probably. So it's because we're in a car. We are in a car and today we're here in the new refreshed Tesla Model S, the plaid version. And we're just going to be talking about it in our extended thoughts. Like hopefully by now now ideally the first

impressions video is out been working on that for a couple days but obviously that's so produced and people have all these questions about all these little things and this is your first time being in the car for extended period of time like looking around it so I'm gonna try to answer as many possible questions about every little thing as I as I can We are working on a review of the car later. I should make that clear. There's a much bigger full review of the Model S and kind of like all of Tesla's coming up in the next couple weeks.

But this is a flagship car and it's pretty exciting. So we get to get into all the little details of it. Where do you want to start? Because you're in the front seat. I'm in the front seat. Adam's between us in the back seat. You might have questions, too. So what do we what do we want to start with? So I feel like there's a yoke in front of me, but we can go anywhere. There's a little context here. I I dropped him you off to pick this up on Friday and I basically

opened the door and left because my theory was this week's podcast was going to be kind of like my raw impressions on it where you've been driving it now for a couple days um for much longer than most people drive in five days yeah i feel like i kind of did this when i first got apollo actually immediately that weekend i had a ultimate tournament in like southern new jersey and the first thing i did was take it on a big road trip so I really got to know the car and the same exact thing happened with this car where Friday picked up the car Saturday had an ADL frisbee game in Boston or at least we were supposed to it got rained out but nevertheless immediately got in this car and drove it 300 miles to Boston and 300 miles back in the same day. So

right off the bat, I get, I get everything. I get supercharging, I get parking, I get driving, I get highway, I get yoke, I get like the full in-depth first impressions. Um, so now at this point I have almost 900 miles on the car. It's, uh, at the time of recording, it's been probably like five days now. And I'm feeling like pretty well acclimated, which is I'm saying this because there are things you kind of have to learn about this car again. This is sort of a Tesla thing. There's things you need to learn about the car to use it well. But I feel like I'm pretty, pretty well into that now. Yeah. Let me start off with my first thought. Yeah, let's see. pretty well into that now.

Yeah, let me start off with my first thought here. Yeah, let's see. I am not, so when I say I'm not a fan of white interiors, I say that as not that I don't think they look good. I say that as I could never have one

because as adorable as Mac is, he is an expert at making everything disgusting. So I do not think this would last. His nails are very long too, so even leather is kind of tough, but Mac would destroy this car. But sitting in here, I do really like the white interior. And I think part of the reason I like that so much is because it's not as much as I thought. Yeah. I have a lot of thoughts, a lot of things there already.

Okay. Number one, white interior. I've had the white interior with the last car I have it again it's this white fake leather vegan leather technically since it's not real leather so the idea came from sitting in a couple other model s's with white and then John Rettinger who has multiple kids and a dog firmly recommended to me that these were super easy to clean and he totally recommended them so when he with kids and a dog told me that the white interior was a go that's when I was like alright I'll give it a shot it's it's been great the one thing you might have to think about is if you wear denim a lot you can like have that rub off onto this like you know fake leather and sort of get into the pores and these are new ventilated seats which the last white seats i had weren't ventilated so there's all these pores in the seats and i'm curious if that's

going to become a new source of like catching dust or dirt or whatever i don't know yet but sure a bit but white interior for me other than that has been great the inside of the car looks better i think there's a carbon fiber accent which you can you can choose wood or carbon fiber i feel like that's a no-brainer well for me anyway and uh yeah and then there's this contrast and the fit and finish and everything i think looks great black and white so here's my uh the, I actually think give it kind of like, literally without even the venting part, give it kind of like a design.

It looks kind of nice. Almost like a two-tone, which I think is kind of cool. Yeah. I do think, so carbon fiber on the white looks nice. My only, my one issue here is if I'm looking at the door, I'm looking at a straight black plastic into a black leather with stitching into a charcoal fabric into white leather, into silver, into carbon, into black

plastic. And that feels like a little too much. I know it's funny about that. Like so many cars, so many people look at this car and go, wow, it's so plain. It's so minimal. There's nothing here. And then you look at some of the other luxury cars and it's, it so plain it's so minimal there's nothing here and then you look at some of the other luxury cars and it's it's what you just described it's metal leather chrome like every other thing next to each other and i think this is kind of a nice in between like a lot of the changes basically that i've noticed with the interior and just the general theme with this car is a lot of small changes add up to a big change. And this like new set of materials and general fit and finish, while it is still pretty minimal, to your point, it is another extra material and it is just a little bit more than before.

And so I think that's probably striking. But, you know, you sit in an RS7 or a Taycan or an EQS and you're going to have like nine materials in a row all next to each other and different designs and stuff. So I kind of like that this is a little bit in between those two. I think I would have just ditched the like linen aspect right here. I think it doesn't fit with the like sharpness. Like if I look at the center console, it's a really nice like it's got black leather, black carbon, the little silver trim, which I think looks great with the white and black and then white leather. But adding this, like, fifth or whatever texture on here, if this was just this, the, like, top black plastic, that's a pretty thing. I think that would have looked a bit cleaner. But, I mean, like, we're really, really pulling strings here.

I noticed there's a speaker behind the front here. So this is all fabric, but the front, it is hiding another speaker. That would make sense. So there's a big speaker in the bottom of the door, the side of the door. Speaker here, speaker here, speaker here. There's a lot. There's a lot going on. Generally, though, I really dig the inside.

I like it a lot. I like this vertical screen much more than the – sorry. I enjoy this horizontal screen much better than the uh sorry i enjoy this horizontal screen much better than the vertical one your last one i never drove the model s before but it felt like a lot of looking really far down like almost like if you were putting your phone in your cup holder for for people who don't own something like that and looking down there but i guess that's the bottom and not anything too important but now that's so much is part of this screen, like so many controls are in here, this needs to be close to you. Even more than before.

Okay, let me talk about the middle of this car. Yeah. The middle of this car, right? Pretty much every previous Tesla, because there's no engine and like a crankshaft and drivetrain transmission in the middle, it's always been just wide open. And they kind of let you figure out what you want to do on the inside there was cup holders before but there was just a bunch of air and storage in the middle of the car and that's the number one thing i always notice is i get in a gas car and wow there's just this big tunnel in the middle of the car taking up space and they brought that back in this car which i was like okay it's interesting

but they still arranged it in a way where there's a lot of nice storage there's cup holders there's like magnets and bits that fold back and expose more storage and yeah it's all very nicely organized and there's a wireless charger up front here and then more under the armrest and there's magnets now so everything's yeah that was always that was that the model s where like it was very hard to shut that or is that model three model yes three so i i'm actually fine with this tunnel because it does seem very functional but i have a couple quirks about that that i gotta mention because i was i've watched like every video on the internet of this car the number one thing that got mentioned or at least was on tesla's website is the screen was

supposed to tilt oh it. It doesn't. And I keep hearing in other videos, oh, it's coming with a software update. I don't know how that's going to work. I don't even know if that's true. I just keep hearing it. I know we like to say software update a lot, but that feels like a hardware thing.

I'm trying to look really closely. There might be a little bit of clearance. Is it supposed to tilt up or down? I don't know. And what is the benefit there? I think it's supposed to tilt towards the driver if i was oh like swing out like right to left yeah so if i'm sitting at a charger watching a movie and there's nobody in the seat next to me i'll watch it tilted towards me i mean i don't know maybe that they could put something in the software to control it and there's a an arm system behind there that we can't see but i wouldn't call that

a software update i guess it is but it feels yeah that's a lot i guess that would be cool yeah it would be cool if it works i just i want a nice spot i want to make it clear that it definitely doesn't tilt right now okay second thing between the wireless chargers and the storage there's actually this little slot right here and it doesn't look that it doesn't seem that big of a deal, but there is a little bit of a slot, and we'll try to show some footage of this. But the day I got this car, it's a new car you pick up. You get this little temporary registration that's just this little slot. Matter of fact, let me show you this slot.

Can you? Well, I can just use my, like, your registration. Yeah, this is a registration, right? It's a little piece of paper. And this, literally, I just got it from the guy sitting next to me showing me the car, and I was like, oh, cool. And I just put it right here, and it slid underneath completely and disappeared behind the wireless charger.

Now, when that happened, I was like, oh, okay okay I guess I just lost the temporary registration luckily I only I only need it for a month or whatever I just don't get pulled over for a month because you don't have the registration I guess it's just disappeared into the center console couple miles later I'm on the highway on the way to Boston. I might have accelerated pretty hard. This car can do that. And it literally spit out the paper like your seat and it flew into the back seat and I had the registration back. I'm going to, so you told this story to us and I imagined like, that seems super accidental. Like, you know, definitely an issue. Like it's one of those things where even if it is really accidental, if you know definitely an issue like it's one of those

things where even if it is really accidental if you're losing something like a bank card or your driver's license in there like that's bad and it's the center console like people are gonna put stuff on here and it's gonna slide down the hill underneath it they should they should just put like a little little seal right underneath so what i want to say is coming in here this feels like it could happen very commonly. So first of all, not only is this gap very big, I'm putting a credit card in here and with my thumb under it,

it is still completely fitting underneath it. So like it could easily fit any type of credit card, even if you have like one of those really nice metal, like an Apple card would slide in there. You go through a drive-thru window. Absolutely no problem. You pay, you get your food, you get your card back. They're handing you the food.

You put it down here for a second. You grab the food. It just slid under the thing. And then the thing with that also is the piece of the center console in front of that gap is literally angled down to the gap. So this feels,

especially if you had a heavy card, if you put it on here, it would probably slide right there and now your credit card is just in your center console somewhere. So Tesla, if you had a heavy card if you put it on here it would probably slide right there and now your credit card is just in your center console so tesla if you're listening if you you know tesla does make adjustments to cars as they build them it's not like this is a flaw of every car for the for the next five years of model s they can tomorrow add that seal if they want yeah super simple rubber seal it'll fit perfectly with all of it i'm assuming my guess is there's not much of there because like the the top of the center console that slides forward is super fluid and my guess

is they don't have anything there because of the fact just like put some brushes there i like this a lot i'm going to try and explain this for the audio listeners so the the center console you open it up and it reveals two cup holders, and then also reveals a nice tray, which then also under that tray you have more storage. But when you put the sliding mechanism all the way forward, it locks. When you come back and let it go,

it stops to leave the cup holders open, and then you can do it again, and it'll go all the way shut so you have no center. All you have is a nice slope to lose your credit card. Yeah, that'll definitely be in the impressions video if you want to see a video. Yeah, it's nice. That's a really nice little touch. I like that a lot.

And then this is a pretty deep storage in the center here too. Does that go all the way? No, it doesn't. No, no, no. That would be actually really annoying. An adjustment. The previous spot that you would put your USB flash drive for your dash cam and sentry mode would be in here. Yeah, that was bad.

Now it's inside the glove box. That's much nicer. And it comes with a flash drive. How does it stick out? So I'll open it again so you can see. See this touchscreen? Oh, I'm too tall. Oh, right there.

So it's just built in. Okay, that's good. But if you're one of those people like me who just jams everything in your glove box i would probably snap that right off the right it's not it's not a big glove box um yeah um but when i'm shoving all my taco bell napkins for when i have to blow my nose on the highway like i would probably snap that off but um yeah so before we move from the like center console you were talking about how like gas power cards are usually ones with the bigger the biggest center console do you remember the uh the

not fisker what was the what's their new name now the karma the karma the karma rivero do you remember that center console massive it literally went took it took the back seat there was no center back seat because I think it was the battery was so big right yeah or that's just where they decided to put it

that was ridiculous that was a choice that was really dumb I like this new center this is nice I like this a lot I do wish you know maybe don't wish

but sometimes it's nice when you have you have like a underneath the center console kind of between the feet of the driver and passenger has like a pathway through it that would be kind of nice sometimes it's nice to just put something down though that's easy to grab um but other than that i really dig it yeah there is also now

uh door storage there was no door storage in any previous model s or x so now there's a couple holders in the door too adam you're in the backseat and you're in the middle So you have this new? Center touchscreen now my hot take maybe it's not a hot take but my take from my impressions initially is That center screen is maybe the most overhyped or overrated feature like in a hundred thousand dollar car Obviously you should have backseat air conditioner control. Yes. You have that now. You have backseat media control.

But Tesla was like, oh, you can play games on this. You can watch videos back here in theater mode. Looking at that screen, would you want to watch a video on that? Absolutely not. No. Yeah. I feel like I get a car sick just looking down at it. It's not a huge screen and it's kind of far away and you're craning your neck down

It's just gonna teach all of our kids to have the worst posture ever if you're watching videos on that or I can just imagine Like three kids back there trying to watch it and the poor middle kid has to put his knees in a really awkward Position because the other two can't see Yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't put too much stock. I mean, it is nice to have. It exists, and you can change your air conditioner controls, and the AC is pretty sweet, and there's two USB-C ports. Is that right? Yep, I see two, I think.

Yeah, so you can charge stuff in the back seat. But also, the back seat middle pops down to be an armrest with two more wireless chargers and some more storage, which is covered and has a magnet. Wait, does it have cup holders? Yep. Okay, good. I was going to say, if we got- You have to hit the button behind the seat, right in the middle, yeah.

So it's like locked, which is actually nice, so it doesn't come down by accident. And then there's another latch in the middle you have to squeeze. Yeah. And there's storage, two wireless chargersgers and two cup holders that's pretty nice i was almost wondering if we were getting to the point in time where we value wireless chargers over cup holders um and if you had to pick right now cup holder or wireless charger i would i would pick wireless charger and i really like these and I almost always have my phone up there now just because it has whatever Maps app or Waze or Navigation or whatever's there, media, meaning music. I'm not watching videos while driving.

But yeah, no, I don't need that many cup holders. Some people are really into cup holders. There's like a Doug DeMuro cup holder count sometimes. Oh, yeah, it's the Subaru Ascent. I'm pretty sure it has like 19. I think that was just because the Subaru Ascent's not the most exciting

car in the world, so that was kind of like his one good thing. My bad. Oh, you turned that off from the fact? Alright, beautiful, beautiful touch screen controls back here. Yeah, I just played the last. Oh yeah, you can beautiful touchscreen controls back here. Yeah, I just played the last. Oh, yeah.

You can watch videos on the screen. It's a little, like, frame rate-y. Oh, yeah, that looks choppy. It's using the car's LTE connection. I wouldn't want to do that all the time. But, yeah, that's... So, yeah, I like the middle of the car. The other one thing I haven't seen,

or haven't gotten to work that doesn't exist in this car yet is active noise cancellation. That's another thing that I keep hearing is going to be a software update. Sounds great. We'll see if it ever happens. But there are definitely more speakers in this car. And there are mics and I could I could believe that there could be active noise cancellation in this car in the future. But I'll say right now, the passive noise isolation in the cabin is really good. It's the best they've ever made in Tesla. And I'd say it's comparable to any other luxury car at this point, which is awesome. Really, all you hear when you're driving is either your media or like tire noise, wind noise, basically.

Yeah, I wish we had active noise cancellation for this podcast episode, but I guess not. I mean, you probably heard like one truck drive literally 10 feet from this car, which is going to make it through if you're driving on the highway. But yeah, I think it's pretty good. All right. So I think we have to get to the elephant in the room. What's the elephant in the room? I don't know what you're talking about.

It's sitting right in front of you. It's the Yoke steering wheel. Oh, yeah. I think we should probably start talking about it now because it's going to take 90% of this episode. So let's go. Did you just accidentally press a button just trying to touch it? No, I hit the brakes so I can move it. No, this is the Yoke.

This is the steering wheel. Okay. I have some mixed thoughts on it i really liked tesla's last wheel actually and the reason i like the last wheel is because all of the the controls were uniquely functional like single use functional there was wheel on each side and there were buttons above and below each wheel and i would always use left button for media volume, press it in to play pause. Right wheel was fan speed, press it in to go auto or off. And then media controls up and down.

The yoke is wide. It doesn't have a top, of course, but it's got these little nubs so you can experiment with different driving positions. But it is very rectangular. And that part doesn't bother me at all. The fact that it's a yoke doesn't bother me at all. It is not actually the yoke that bothers me. I've gotten used to it at this point. But there are no stalks, as you can tell.

There's no drive stalks and there's no blinkers. And the buttons on the steering wheel are all touch sensitive yeah they're not physically clicking in buttons they are haptic buttons but they're like pressing a piece of glass that vibrates back at you all the buttons blinkers headlights horn windshield wipers all of it and that part sucks because now that i'm doing this new like hand over hand motion because i can't just pass it through like a wheel normally would i am constantly at least in the first couple days brushing buttons brushing the blinkers brushing the headlights um and it's so frustrating to have like missing the blinker and then turn and hit the blinker.

You didn't want to hit. It's like the hardest thing to hit and the easiest thing to hit at the same time. It just, it's like knows when it's a very odd opposite of what you want to do. Yeah. So I, you know, at this point I'm getting, I'm getting my muscle memory down of like the location of the button. So on the left side, it's the blinkers and the headlights. The blinkers are obviously easy to reach

because I am over here with one hand I'll hit the blinkers it's a light press to hold uh-huh and then you heard the the vibration another vibration for a heavy press okay which is like I guess it's sort of a force sensitive and that'll leave the blinker on you You can press it again to turn off. Headlights, same thing. You can do a headlight flash just by tapping or you can heavy press to turn them on and get your settings. And then on the other side, yeah, it's just a horn. Just tap the horn.

It's kind of normal, which I don't know. That doesn't seem like better than a horn in the middle. Yeah, I don't remember that. And then you have your wipers and your uh your mic for voice activation um but yeah it's really i i think the combination of touch sensitive buttons and the yoke are what goes so wrong i think if it was one or the other i would be less mad i think if it was a regular wheel with touch sensitivesensitive buttons, that would be fine. I could remap my muscle memory, but I'd still be passing the wheel through my hands, and I wouldn't brush them accidentally.

I think if it was a yoke with regular buttons and stalks, that's actually what I would prefer. That would have also been fine because I can get used to the yoke, and I've actually, in a couple days, gotten my steering down. I do full 360 turns every day out of my driveway and it's fine now but i would i just i get so mad when i accidentally hit one of these buttons so that's how i feel about the yoke yeah i could see a good middle ground here being just uh like a slight indentation with still touch buttons so you can kind of feel where everything is a little easier because i've seen you like yeah you're if your thumb like kind of comes right off the steering wheel and then hits the edge of where the the touch sensitive

spot starts that's not actually hitting the the blinker so like if you could feel that little dent going down and they do have a little indent in the middle to differentiate you know left and right but that only helps in up and down you can still miss it left to right on you can miss all around the button. Yeah, pretty hard. And I think the first couple days, like, during that Boston road trip, I would be going to merge, and I would look over my shoulder. Like, normally you just hit the stock, and you're gone,

and you have to check your shoulder and then merge. I would, like, always have to check to make sure I hit the right blinker and to make sure I hit the actual blinker. Yeah. And the haptic feedback is nice if you're, like of in the area and you like know when you hit it. But it's just like a lot of times I would check and I would signal and I'd realize I hit the wrong button because I wasn't looking. So I'd always check and then look at the wheel again just to make sure I got it. make sure I got it. And that, that like mapping process for me, I have 10 years and a hundred thousand miles of driving with stocks that I have to unwind or like relearn. There's people,

you know, who get maybe the long range one later that might have 40 years and half a million miles of driving with stocks. And how long is it going to take them to flip, to like learn this and get as proficient as they used to be with what they just were used to forever. I, I don't know. I think it's gonna take me like,

if I was guessing three weeks. All right. So before we head to break here now, uh, I just want to leave it off with one last question. Even with you saying in three weeks, you think you'll be pretty much fully acclimated to this. If you had the choice,

even at the end of that three weeks, uh, wheel or yoke at the end of the three weeks. I mean, just like, you know, you're going to have in the car forever. So you understand that a yoke,

like in three weeks, you think you'll be totally ready for it but if you had the choice right now to to have a wheel in this car would you take it i would i would take right now right now right now knowing you're gonna have this car for longer than three weeks so yeah i have a unique i have a unique answer to that i would take a hybrid i don't know if that's cheating choice i want to i want to go yoke now or old wheel. Old wheel. Old wheel. Yeah.

But if I could hybrid, I would pick the yoke with real buttons. I think a lot of people would agree with you there. I think the yoke is weird. I would prefer wheel, but maybe just because, I mean, I've been using it for so long. I think most reasonable people would pick a wheel until they get used to the yoke i guess i but i do think like you said it's a difference with the the buttons i think are what a lot of people mostly seem to have an issue with or are worried about and i i think that's a legitimate concern that you know i'm sure people will get used to it but at the same time didn't

you said that uh elon's excuse probably for the yoke is that eventually we're not going to need steering wheels at all. But that just feels like that makes zero sense because why would you make the product different when you're going to get rid of it? That is fundamentally an excuse

instead of a reason. You don't make a feature worse as it starts to rain. You don't make a feature worse because you won't need it later. That's like saying, oh, we didn't add wireless charging to our phone. We added worse wireless charging to our phone because we won't need it later. That's like saying, oh, we didn't add wireless charging to our –

we added worse wireless charging to our phone because we won't need it in the future. No, you just make it as good as possible until you don't need it anymore. And this has always been – maybe we'll talk about this later. Probably we'll make a whole video about this eventually. number one like fundamental conflict when talking about teslas is number one their best feature i think is how fun they are to drive and number two their number one biggest like tech advantage that they talk about a lot anyway yeah is how you won't have to drive them and the yoke to me is like right in the middle of that crossroads of like okay this is the most fun car to drive i've ever driven and probably for a lot of people will be the most fun car to drive

so i don't really want to do too much autopilot why would you make the steering wheel worse because later you won't have to drive it but i want to drive it you autopilot why would you make the steering wheel worse because later you won't have to drive it but i want to drive it you know what i mean like that conflict between those two guiding principles of tesla and why they're so successful is fascinating to me yeah it's a that's a head scratcher and i'm sure based on elon's tweets we'll have plenty more head scratchers within the lifetime of tesla but uh let's uh let's throw it to break before it starts thundering here. And I guess we'll wrap this. We were going to do the whole thing in the car, but we'll probably wrap up the Q&A back in the studio because it's now lightning outside. Shout out to the thunder. We'll come back with Q&A.

Be right back. Wait, can I just say that this is going to be the first Tesla Model S Plaid ASMR? True. We can fade out with some rain. Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM.

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Okay, welcome back. We are back in the studio because it started raining and it'll hopefully sound a little better in here but we're going to answer questions from twitter and discord about the car that you guys might be wondering i we like i said we're planning on reviewing the car we're gonna have a whole bunch more information and details but it's just so good to see what people are curious about in something, uh, something of a flagship like this. So you've picked some already, from what I understand. So we can, we can get into those right off the bat and maybe we'll find some more, but I'm here to answer all of your Ploud Modelist questions. Yeah. I feel like this is a good prep almost for the review. Cause you

get to see what a lot of people are interested in. And then sometimes even diving into a conversation makes you realize something a little more that you now can put into the review. But, um, yeah, we asked on Twitter, we also asked on Discord and we got some pretty good ones from each. So I'm going to start it off, which it's kind of going to tie into what we talked about before the break. So we really looked at the interior a lot. We kind of picked it apart, talked a lot about it. But somebody wants to know what was your one favorite part about the new interior? My one favorite part about the new interior? My one favorite part about the new interior is the horizontal screen.

I really liked the vertical screen before and the way the UI flipped back and forth from top to bottom. And I was curious if I would miss like having that much of the map in vertical. And I'm really glad I like the horizontal screen. I think that's probably my favorite. I'd say that's gotta be one of the biggest,

maybe not the biggest upgrade, but I think that's the biggest like quality of life change that they did that makes the most sense i mean yeah it matches everything up across their lineup obviously the software is going to look the same as model 3 and y although it is a little bit better um yeah no yeah the horizontal screen is probably the thing that stuck out to me the most other than the yoke and that would be the the biggest positive cool i'm gonna tack on to this too just because i know my answer for this um what's your favorite part about the exterior that's different hmm i mean the chrome blackout is pretty sweet yeah that's fantastic that's probably my predictable answer um i do kind of like that it looks a little more aggressive

and obviously it's a bit more sporty of a car but but it's got these huge tires, 285s on the front, which is usually the rear tires on the staggered Model S before, and 295s on the back, just these massive tires. And the fenders actually flare out a little bit wider to accommodate those bigger tires. I did notice that. It's actually a wider car. Yeah. And so the repeaters with the cameras stick out more to see around those flares. So it is a bit of a more stanced car, which is kind of another thing I like about it. But yeah, I think the blackout chrome looks really good.

Every car company should do that. They should have done the logos also. I'd stick by that. The two last pieces of chrome are the front and the back logos. I have to say, I love the new wheels. Is that like the new Arachnid? Did they call it something different? No, yeah.

That's the 21-inch Arachnid wheel with the performance tires. It is different, though, than the other Arachnids, isn't it? Slightly different, yeah. I think they look better. I think they look way better. I like these. Also, 21-inch, we all know potholes are huge issues so that should be fun you haven't been on 21s in like over a year right three years three years since oh man yeah

um all right next question so this is one i really like this is from kachka probably mispronouncing that it was on a discord server actually and while i know what your answer is i think it's a really interesting question they said if you could sacrifice half the power to double the range would you okay well we might have to define this a little more but yeah i think question um half the power meaning back to 500 horsepower and double the range meaning 690 something miles. 690 miles. Because right now you get on the 19-inch wheels 390 miles. If you double that, you're looking at 780 miles of range. That's pretty sick.

That's crazy. I would take that. Then you did not answer how I thought. Really? Yeah. I mean, I guess if you really think about it, though, if we're doing quick math, I'm sure this isn't perfect, but zero to 60 in what, four seconds, 4.2 seconds? That's still like a base model three, which is still very fast.

That's why I wanted to clarify because I'm sure this is a technicality, but when he says half the power, half the power won't get you half the time. Half the power might get you two-thirds of the time. That's why I'm like, all right, if you take half a thousand horsepower, the last Model S had about 700 horsepower, 650 horsepower, something like that. So you're cutting off half the power of the Plaid Model S, which is a thousand horsepower. Now you're at 500. So it'll probably perform like a performance Model 3, like 3.4 seconds over 60. Which is still like there are a lot of street cars, like sports cars that people put thousands of dollars of upgrades into just to get to a 3 or a 4 like that.

Yeah, it's still quick. So that's very fast. And then you get 700 miles, even 600 miles of range. It's absurd. I think that would be the ultimate long range car and that would be super great. And I would take that and I think I would have more fun in something like a Roadster later down the line. So if I'm imagining an amazing long range Model S, half the power and double the range

sounds pretty good to me. I would easily pick double the range. Yeah. Yeah. No problem. But I also don't drive an EV every day. So like even that would still be probably five times as fast as my car. I wonder how long it would take to charge a battery that big.

Because right now the current home charger, right now it's like great to leave every day with a full charge. But if I get home with like almost empty battery, it'll take all of overnight, like eight full hours to get to full. So if you double the range, I don't know if you could charge to full every day. I guess you would still be able to charge to within a day's worth of driving

or like average day's worth of driving. But then again, on supercharging, if we're talking about efficiency of the beginning, you're saying 50% of that battery at top speeds would still be 300 miles so that would be amazing yeah that yeah okay cool that seems like the pretty uh pretty smart thing to do sick now if you could take double the performance in half the range i mean if it was my if i had another car maybe and like yeah we're getting to the point where could that even be

street legal I mean like yes but if you had something that was literally double the power of Plaid right now I think we would be seeing new laws coming into play the Rimac Nevera is roughly double the power double the power yeah 1900 horsepower what's it zero to 60 uh it's supposed to be 1.85 seconds and I don't remember what they said the range is going to be. I think it's something reasonable, like 275 miles. But I might have to double check on that because the battery size isn't final. But that's like the world record fastest. They're making like a very small number of them.

And it's a two-door supercar. It's $2 million. But it is 2 million horsepower. 2,000 horsepower. I'm talking about rockets now. No's a it's two thousand horsepower which is hilarious but that's yeah that's pretty wild yeah um okay this says genuine question tesla's mission is to mass produce evs that regular people use why is everyone obsessed with speed who cares regular people are just getting from point a to b constricted by speed limits often in congested

cities why is this such a selling point yeah uh it's fun yeah it's fun unfortunately is the reason um no i i mentioned this sort of at the end when we were in the car but like you know tesla has like a couple main selling points that they're really good at one of them is like they happen to be the safest cars you can buy one of them is that they happen to have like the most tech of any car you can buy. One of them is maybe someday the autopilot will get good enough where you don't really have to drive it that much. But one of them is definitely that they're some of the most fun cars to drive. And everybody who gets them knows that.

And most people I know who get them are very aware of that and love that about them. So you can ask all you want, like, what's the point? You can't really take advantage of it. But it's just fun. Yeah, I think, like you said, there are so many other benefits. And yes, speed is one. Speed is one that's just like, it's so easy to pick a number and compare it to another car. It's so much harder to pick one headline grabbing title to explain that, like, autopilot is better in this car than another car.

It just doesn't really flow off the tongue. So we live in a world where unfortunately headlines are the big thing that get all the traction. So yes, you're seeing that speed seems like the main selling point here, but I probably almost argue it isn't. I would just argue that it's the most advanced. Tesla is generally the most advanced EV right now. One of the best infrastructures out there.

It's just like the total package in the EV world, it's winning. So like that's what's selling it. Speed is the quick and easy headline. I mean, if you talk about trying to show it on video in five seconds, you can show how fast a new Model S Plaid is, where it would take a 10 minute video to go over all the different like autopilot features of it or safety features and that's just not as fun here's one more here's one more here's one more answer to that question uh you may have you might have heard about something called the halo car effect um and it's been sort of explained in a couple different ways but the easiest way to explain it is you want to have a car at the top of your lineup that demonstrates the best of your abilities

something like a flagship. So Audi makes a lot of different cars. They make sedans, they make hatchbacks, they make regular cars, and then they make the R8. And the R8, it's a V10, shares the same engine from like a Lamborghini Aventador, and it's an incredible supercar. And they'll trickle down the tech from that and all the headlines from as good as that car is with everything else in their lineup. And this is very common among a lot of other like high performance sort of car brands. Tesla uniquely is sort of creating a halo car for all of electric cars. So you've heard Elon sort of talk about like we want driving the electric car to be the obvious choice. And there's

a group of people who pick their car based on how fun it is to drive there's a group of people who base their car purchase on like how fast it can be and all these types of things and when you have an electric car that does that better than gas cars that's just one more reason to advance overall people being okay with electric cars so it's a halo car type of feature for electric cars in general, but of course for Teslas, when you have fast Teslas, people now understand that Teslas and electric cars

can be high performance cars too. Yeah, and I think that it might not sound that important. Yes, the everyday person is talking about just getting from point A to B with a speed limit, but if you think back to pre-Tesla, when we're talking about early hybrids the the main criticism of them was is like this is this dinky little car that can barely make it down the road like you can make it down the road but there's still plenty of people who are making fun of it for not having any pickup or not having any acceleration and and

tesla with evs change that and now it's much harder for people to use that argument as a gas car enthusiast to say that the performance aspect of it is not up to snuff. If anything, it's better now. So it's completely eliminated that argument out of there. And it's given EVs a place in our market. Yeah. And that's great. And there's people who take their car to the drag strip on weekends for fun.

Like you couldn't do that with an electric car for a long time. So now you can. Well, so here's a question. Right now, we're kind of seeing like the Model S Plaid is the Model S is definitely they're higher to your car, but it's still shaped and kind of for an everyday family. It has a hatchback. It's got plenty of room.

Like it's not your average sports car. When Roadster comes out, do you think they start caring a little less about Model S and its overall speeds? Like Plaid is pushing a number we haven't seen before, but when Roadster is doing that, I can't see Plaid pushing any further. Yeah, I fully agree.

So Plaid just in Tesla's nomenclature is really just referring to the powertrain, the triple motor powertrain. I should have said Model S, that's my idea. But no, I think you're right. I think when Roadster comes out, that's where they focus on performance. You notice Plaid Plus was canceled. Like they had plans for a slightly faster, slightly higher powered Model S.

And I think realized, you know, at some point during that process, not only would they not be able to make it in time, but like it's not really a priority. Yeah. not only would they not be able to make it in time, but it's not really a priority. And yes, I do think Roadster takes over the halo car effect from Plaid Model S when it comes out. I think that's true. Cool. So I have one here I'm going to ask the question,

but I am also going to answer it because I think we've discussed a couple of times that I'm the most well-versed on this part. It is, why is it called Plaid? That's a dumb name and doesn't even sound right. Okay. on this part it is a why is it called plaid that's a dumb name and doesn't even sound right okay so I think you guys have Adam you've seen the clip of what it's from you've not seen the movie that neither you've seen the whole movie I've not seen Spaceballs I think I've seen the clip or at least in the clip in the events okay yeah so for anyone watching I feel like if you are around 20 or younger you might not get this is a reference from a movie, by the way.

It's a movie reference. And Elon, it's like the perfect movie that I assume Elon watches. It's a very trolly. It is a movie that is a parody to Star Wars. That's the easiest way to describe it. It's called Spaceballs. It was very popular a long time ago. I'd say even my age is probably some of the last people who saw it because I think I was even a little young to probably watch it.

It definitely has some adult scenarios in it. But essentially, if you're familiar with Star Wars, there's light speed. And every time they go in light speed, if you look out the front of the spaceship, a bunch of lights come at you because you're going so fast that the lights, I guess, not... Yeah.

I don't know what the physics behind Star Wars uniform is. Yeah, warp speed, something like that. So in Spaceballs, there's a point where they're being chased and they have to go to light speed. The ship that's chasing them goes into light speed. So in order to catch up, the ship that is chasing them to catch up to the ship that they're going after, they want to go faster. So they turn it into what they call, and remember, this is movie not everything is very serious they call it plaid so when they put it into plaid

the spaceship in front instead of the stars coming past them and stretching out and being this light it is literally a plaid shoot that just kind of goes past them and all the colors turn into plaid so it's just an essentially another level of speed Hence, Model S Plaid is hitting these new speeds. Elon likes to mess around. And that's what the badge on the back of your car is. And now, yeah, now that's what you see when you hit the pedal. So it makes a lot of sense. I'm sure it sounds really dumb if you don't understand the reference,

but I would, Spaceballs is a great movie. Highly suggest watching it or the clip at least. Yeah, it's funny because when I was initially describing the car to people, I said, oh, this is the Plaid Model S. Univers model s universally they were like why did you get a plaid car like they thought the color of the car was plaid someone needs to wrap it someone needs to take the sacrifice i need some sort of wrap somewhere on it to do that that would be amazing plaid plaid somebody make it happen. Plaid plaid. Plaid squared. Oh, man. That would be great and awful at the same time.

Okay, I have one. Okay. Do you think it should have looked more aggressive with the new wing side skirts and fenders? I know it doesn't need them, but it looks very similar to a normal Model S. Yeah. So one of the things I was mentioning is there's a lot of small changes that add up to a big change.

Yeah. And the more you look at the car, the more little things they change. The front splitter, the lip is bigger. The front headlights are a little more aerodynamic and there's a slot on the side for cooling your brakes. The rear diffuser is just a little bit bigger. The stance is just a little wider. The fender is a little wider. When you combine all those things, you're like, oh, yeah, it looks like an old Model S.

But it does look a little bit different. But there were, I mean, people saw the prototypes being tested with like a huge fixed wing and like a body kit basically. And they're like, why didn't it look like that, like a race car? It's because this isn't a race car. It's a four-door sedan that happens to be faster than all the other cars i think roadster if you're after that if you're after that you will be able to get an electric car that looks like a race car it's just not model s so yes they've they've haloed the the drivetrain pretty hard in this car but it they didn't make it look it kind of looks

like a sleeper if you don't know what's coming it looks like any other tesla um i think if you're after a race car look, you probably shouldn't be buying a four-door sedan. Yeah, and not every car company and even not every performance car company has done that all the time. I mean, if you look at Porsche, you could pull up a Porsche from the 90s and a Porsche from today, and they look very similar. I know mostly the headlights have changed, but even the shape of them is very similar very similar yeah they've got a dna yeah and then people love that about them so it's like that's not always a pro would i have liked to seen a couple cool i think i think a model s with like way more aggressive like skirts and a front uh front fender would be sick and i'm sure people will do that with aftermarket parts but um in order to as you're selling it as because the same thing we're always looking at speed where i think

this is the problem with having such a good speed is we're always comparing it to sports cars this is more compared to a luxury sedan a luxury um what do they call hatch i mean hatchback what do they call it in the uk don't they call them saloon cars super saloon saloon yeah like this is a saloon car which yeah a lot of times you could argue is more of a family car than a sports car so yeah if you want a crazy body kit have you seen the pikes peak version of model s plaid no so uh there's a pikes peak like race up a mountain every year oh maybe uh randy i forgot how to say his last name, was a driver for it.

And then they modded one with a huge body kit and arrow kit and fixed wing. If you want a crazy looking Model S, just look up that one. That one looks hilarious. So you'll have to do an aftermarket pretty much. Yeah, it looks plaid. It's literally plaid.

I got a question here. Somebody asked, how's the UI compared to Model 3 and y versus last gen i've seen other videos what's your take it's supposed to come to the entire lineup in two weeks according to elon well wouldn't count on the timing but i do really like the ui it's very smooth the swipe in from the side with all the controls is new for me i gotta get used to that because i'm used to the previous vertical screen version of it, but I really like it. It's clean.

It's mostly black and white, nothing too distracting. The dock at the bottom is modular and stays in place exactly where you want it, so that's sweet. The one thing it doesn't have, and this is so specific, but that I want is granular fan control. So right now I have to go into the air conditioning and slide a touchscreen slider from

like five to eight and then back to seven and then just give me that on the wheel i can't figure out why they didn't add that back having to go into something like that for air conditioning controls would probably make me uh pretty annoyed after a while but i do have to say the you mentioned this i think in the first half of the podcast but the drive select in the side of the screen, I do agree it could push out a little further. And the thing that I think is the dumbest reason why it doesn't is because as it pushes that whole menu to the right, you still have half the screen of basically nothing. It's just like the faded out background. So it seems like there's no reason to not push that out, give you a little more of a target to hit. push that out, give you a little more of a target to hit.

But other than that, I mean, again, I think the horizontal screen looks fantastic in the car and the UI looks way better from someone who doesn't actually drive the car. I got another question about the tech that I think is interesting. How in God's name are those motors able to withstand that much heat generation? I don't think we can do the 0 to 100 in 1.9 seconds

more than say, I think he's talking about kilometers, more than say two times. It's just physically impossible. And that is actually kind of the biggest technical improvement with this car versus the last Model S. So if you look at the headlines of Model S versus Taycan, the Model S technically had a quicker 0-60, like 2.3 versus 2.4, and a lot of people who raced the two cars would have the Model S win because they'd have full state of charge with one

versus full state of charge with the other, and it would be that much quicker. But the advantage of the Taycan was an incredible cooling system and much better tech that had it ready to do that same launch time over and over and over again. And so I saw a really interesting graph. I'm pretty sure this was a Motor Trend article where they were comparing the two, where they saw like the initial zero to 60s and you had Model S right below.

And then you had a second run and Model S was about the same time. And then a third run and it was way slower. Fourth run, way slower. Fifth run, slower, slower, slower. And Taycan only got a little bit slower throughout its run. And so that was something that people would always sort of gloss over.

But if you really looked into performance cars, like this was like, well, this is something Tesla has to fix. And so that's what they've done is they've got these carbon-sleeved rotors. They've got what Elon describes as the most advanced motors in the world. And of course, better heat pumps pumps better overall cooling of the car and they're able to keep the

battery temperature much more in line with what they want and now it's almost a robotic performance uh of literally i think brooks did multiple i think he did seven quarter miles in a row all from launch and got all like 9.25 9.27 9.26 9.29 over and over same robotic times so that is kind of the most impressive technical achievement of this new powertrain is how consistent it is overall able to deliver the same performance um and a lot of people view that as like an answer to the taiken. And, uh, I mean, it's perfect example that we need more competition because it's making everyone better. I mean, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah.

Oh, someone said, okay, this is an interesting one. Maybe one of our last questions. Do you feel luxurious in a Porsche Taycan or sorry, do you feel luxurious like in a Porsche Taycan when you sit in a Tesla? Because the features and specs are obviously better than in a Taycan. I still think the Taycan has a better interior, but the fit and finish and overall quality of Tesla's interior is better. It's just that it's better in that minimalist way. Like if you were comparing it to the Taycan still, the Taycan is very different in the types of materials that they use, in the

amount of buttons and switches and the layout. And it's just very different. And if that's the type of traditional luxury you're after, this new Model S doesn't really approach that or get any closer to that. But in Tesla land of minimal, several materials, carbon fiber this, metal here, plastic here, it has leveled up all of it. All the leather's softer, all the seats are better, all the features, the perforated seats are nicer, all the carpets are softer, all the magnets of all the latches are all better. Everything is

much better stuck in place and there are no gaps. And I think that's probably what they were going for. They're not trying to turn it into a traditional luxury car. It's too hard to compare those two, I think. Yeah. So, you know, that's an interesting question from the perspective of like the word luxury and the way it gets used. And it's fascinating to me. But yeah, I think this is the best finish they've ever had in any car. So I kind of took that question as like, imagine, well, I think you're right in how you took

it. When I first heard them ask that question, my initial thought was like, in terms of luxury, like, do I feel like I am luxury as in like other people are, is it a head turner essentially? Like, and I would argue, I think I might argue if you are driving the Taycan around right now, because less of them are the road, it is probably the more head turning car when you're passing others and passing people on the street um whether that is your definition of luxury as in aka i enjoy when other people look at me and are jealous of what i am driving then then maybe the tecan takes it in that but again i think so much of the interior and everything's prefer preferential yeah they're

pretty they're both pretty low-key i feel like the teikan looks just like a panamera and like a 911 and there's other portions that look like it i think though people are so used to what porsches look like that this looks a little different so it's it's like something's different about that and i'm going to stare at it to try and figure out what's different the taikan yeah a little bit i've pronounced everything different four times in this episode but i think there's so many Model S's out there now, it's like, oh, that could be an old 75D, or oh my goodness, that's the Plaid. Our last question here is from Josh Martin,

and he asks, does it send though? Yes, it does. It absolutely does. We actually have a fun little clip that we're going to play for our outro here. And I think for video or audio listeners, you will definitely be able to tell what's going on. Oh, yeah, the picture. Yeah. So you guys don't really get to see this on the podcast, but every time we do the end credits, I completely stumble over what we're going to say.

So I'm going to tell Marques, I'm going to start saying the end of it, and Marques is going to punch it while I'm saying it, and we're going to see what happens. Go for it. Okay, ready? Yeah. Waveform Podcast is produced by Adam Molina. We are Bargain with Studio 71, and our intro-outro music is created by Vain Sell.

Jesus. Okay. I did it. Oh, my God. One take. Thank you.