Model S

The Tesla Model S is a full-size, all-electric luxury sedan, and it is the car that turned Tesla from a small sports-car maker into a serious automaker. It first reached customers on June 22, 2012, at the Fremont, California factory, it was billed as the world's first premium electric sedan, and it set an early range record of 265 miles on a single charge from its 85 kWh battery. A battery's size is measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh), which is roughly the energy a microwave uses running for an hour, and a bigger number means more miles between charges.

What is the Model S?

The Model S is a luxury sedan that runs on batteries instead of gasoline. It seats up to five adults, and it arrived with a 17-inch touchscreen in the dash and a live internet connection, which made the cabin feel more like a connected device than a normal car. At launch you could pick from three battery sizes, 40, 60, and 85 kWh, and the biggest one delivered that record 265 miles of range. The goal was not just a clean car but one people truly wanted, a car that could go toe to toe with gasoline rivals on speed, range, and technology.

Why the Model S Exists

Tesla's first car, the Roadster, was a low-volume sports car built on top of an existing chassis. The Model S was the opposite move: the first Tesla built from the ground up, designed to carry the company from a curiosity into a real premium carmaker. Elon showed it as a prototype in March 2009 at a $57,400 base price ($49,900 after the federal tax credit then on offer), and the whole point was to prove that a car built to be electric from scratch could simply be better than any gasoline car like it, and by doing that, speed up the switch to clean transport.

How it Works

The clever part is that Tesla kept selling the same car while making it far better, mostly by improving the battery and the body instead of starting over. A flat, skateboard-style battery pack sits low in the floor, which keeps the car planted and opens up room inside. Over the years, bigger packs (85 kWh at launch, a 100 kWh pack by 2016) plus a slipperier shape and less weight pushed the range steadily higher.

That climb from 265 miles to 402 miles was about more than bragging rights. Range anxiety, the worry that you will run out of charge before you get home, was the single biggest thing keeping people out of electric cars, and crossing the 400-mile line in 2020 with the Long Range Plus made the Model S the first EV ever rated over 400 miles. One car, refined for a decade, each version going further than the last.

The Economics of the Model S

The bet was straightforward: a higher-priced flagship would pay for the brand and the factory, but only if sales climbed fast enough to make the math work.

They did climb. Going from roughly 2,650 deliveries in a partial first year to almost 57,000 all together by the end of 2014 is the moment Tesla stopped being a science project and became a carmaker with real money coming in, the same money that later paid for the mass-market Model 3 and Model Y.

Current Status of Model S

The Model S is still built at Fremont, sold as a dual-motor version and the three-motor Model S Plaid. Plaid is where the engineering goes to the extreme: 1,020 horsepower, a 9.23-second quarter mile, a 200 mph top speed (with the required Track Package hardware), and a claimed 1.99-second 0-60 mph time.

Breaking below two seconds is the part that stops people cold. The 2016 P100D with Ludicrous mode hit 2.5 seconds and was sold as the quickest production car in the world, and Plaid then shaved off another half-second, a gap that usually separates supercars costing several times as much. A luxury sedan with room for the kids in back now out-accelerates cars with no back seat at all.

What Comes Next

The Model S has already done its most important work by giving Tesla a whole family of cars. The Model X SUV launched in 2015 sharing the Model S platform and powertrain, and the money and the credibility the sedan built paid for the Model 3 and Model Y that came next. Its job now is to sit at the top of the lineup, take on the newest battery and performance technology first, and prove year after year that Tesla can keep pushing the limit higher.

The Bottom Line

The Model S is the car that turned an electric-car startup into a serious automaker. It won the first unanimous Motor Trend Car of the Year vote and proved an EV could be the most desirable car on the road. Looking back on that win, Elon said the aim "was to show that an electric car truly can be better than any gasoline car, which is a critical step towards the widespread adoption of sustainable transport." Almost everything Tesla sells today, and much of what the company is worth, traces back to one sedan that refused to be a compromise.

Related

Keep reading: Model X, Model Y. Zoom out to the Tesla overview, or open the Tesla Lineup Explorer.