In a typical fashion, Tesla CEO Elon Musk packed a ton of information into a single 140 character tweet when he teased the Tesla Model S’s new Ludicrous+ Mode.
“Promising early results from the Ludricrous Easter egg,” Musk tweeted shortly after 1 p.m. on Thursday. “Looks like 0 to 60 mph in 2.34 sec (Motor Trend spec) might be achievable…”
What does this all mean? First of all, he’s specifically tweeting about the Ludicrous+ mode. Right now, Tesla’s Model S P100D and Model X P100D just has a “normal” Ludicrous mode, a feature that enables quicker acceleration time. With Ludicrous, the Model S is one of the fastest production cars in the world. In 2.5 seconds, the car can accelerate to highway speed, quickly going from 0 to 60 mph.
But Tesla just rolled out a new update that makes the car even faster. On Sunday, Musk tweeted that a new update for Hardware 2 (HW2) will roll out for the first 1,000 cars, and the rest will follow. This update enables the Ludicrous+ mode.
According to Musk’s tweet, the car can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 2.34 seconds. That’s 0.16 seconds faster, and 0.6 seconds faster than what Musk promised back in November.
By Motor Trend specs, Musk means that the car can achieve this acceleration time within Motor Trend’s testing specifications for measuring it.
Musk likes to call these software upgrades and hidden features “Easter eggs.” The Ludicrous+ isn’t the first Easter Egg Tesla came up with. There’s one that makes the car doors open really fast, one that activates a virtual space adventure to Mars and one that makes you feel like you’re traveling down a Mario Kart Rainbow Road.
In the case of the Ludicrous+, users must hold down the “Ludicrous” button on their screen for about five seconds. A warp speed effect screen will appear, and users will be prompted with the question, “Are you sure you want to push the limits?” And with a push of a button, users can push the limits of speed.
You can watch how it works here.
