What started out looking like the ultimate challenge between brains and brawn turned out to be a day to forget for one party, and a day recorded in the record books for the other.
On January 18 at the Palm Beach International Raceway, Dodge’s Challenger Hellcat was put up against Tesla’s Model S in a drag strip race to see which type of car was faster — one priding itself in engine muscle, based largely around its 6.2L supercharged HEMI V8 engine with an output of 707 horsepower, and the other in the engineer’s smarts, if you will, in designing the car’s P85D’s twin electric motors, which have a combined 691 horsepower.
Before the race started, it appears as though Dodge’s driver false-started, but it turned out to have no impact on the race itself because come its conclusion, Tesla’s Model S became the fastest production electric car to ever cover a quarter-mile distance, doing so in 11.68 seconds at 114.6 mph.
The Hellcat, meanwhile, finished the race in 17.46 seconds at 82.74 mph, with most of the time being eaten up by the smoke show the driver puts on at the start of the race.
To see the event from start to finish, check out the two-minute video below. If you want to see just the race, you can skip to the 1:18 mark.
The Model S has long been understood to pack some serious power — on record, it can from 0 to 60 miles in just 3.2 seconds, but in this race, it covered this range in just 3.1 seconds. The car’s ability to go from rest to ridiculously fast is due largely to its incredible electric torque via its cutting-edge traction control systems.
Next up for Tesla’s Model S — a race against Mercedes Benz’s E63s AMG:
No date has been announced yet.
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