Elon Musk Says “Take Out the Floor Mats” to Make Model S Faster

When Elon Musk triumphantly tweeted out Motor Trend’s latest test of the Model S P100D, which broke the 2.3-second 0-6 mark for a production car, he made a minor error. Motor Trend had the Model S running on Ludicrous Plus at 2.275507139 seconds, rounded correctly to 2.8. But Musk fudged it a little, and rounded down to 2.27. When he got called on it, he explained: take out the floor mats, and the P100D gets just that much faster.

On Tuesday, Motor Trend announced that Model S P100D in Ludicrous Plus mode was the first production car to ever break 0-60 in 2.3 seconds in one of its tests. Stripped all the way down to into racing mode, the Model S can 0-60 in 2.1 seconds, so we know the car is lightning fast. But even with the production car world record firmly in grasp, Elon Musk wasn’t satisfied with the officially rounded 2.28 seconds. He tweeted the Motor Trends report, saying “Production Tesla Model S P100DL sets Motor Trend all-time world record to 60 mph in 2.27 sec.”

Later Tuesday morning, he was asked what the number was 2.27 or 2.28. He replied “Take out the floor mats and it’s 2.27. MT said everything had to be standard production.” As a production car, Motor Trends was testing the P100D basically as you purchase it straight from the factory. This means all the seats, the regulation steering wheel and yeah, the floor mats.

Racing strip gets rid of all the extra weight on the car, so when the Model S P100D was put through its paces to show off how it will perform in the Electric GT Championship, almost all of the interior came out. Elon seems to really make sure customers know that they can go something like 0.005507139 seconds faster than the Motor Trends time — you just have to go without the floor mats, and maybe the front trunk liner. Tesla will even take it out for you. Thanks, buddy.