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Comment by argonaut | Hacker News Reader

The Tesla is not a supercar. It's a luxury car. Its competitors are BMW/Mercedes-type luxury cars. Just because a car is $150k does not make it a supercar.

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Well it's in top trim 0.5 sec faster to 60 then Porsche cayenne Turbo S and just a bit slower then Lambo Aventador. Tesla model S p85d is faster then Aventador and same time to 60 as Lambo Veneo (costs over 4 million USD).

To say that it is a "bit slower" than an Aventador is very misleading. In a 0-60 straight line drag race, maybe. But that's not particularly hard to do (that's why Mustangs are cheap), and also not the point of any serious supercar.

Well Shelby GT350 is not particularly cheap at 70K yet can't touch those numbers either :). The point of serious supercar is to demonstrate the status of the owner :). If it was track performance then GTR Nismo is making majority of super cars look very bad and at 1/4 to 1/20 of the cost.

And on the Autobahn it’s slower than most family sedans, actually obstructing traffic.

Maybe those "most family sedan" drivers should try to obey the speed limits?

>Autobahn

Big parts of the German autobahn have no speedlimits...

I'm German and that's just a false statement.

What's false about it? I drive through Germany regularly and there are stretches of the autobahn where there's no speed limit, I've driven at 130mph past police cars and it's absolutely fine - are you saying that the "big" part is false?

quick fact check via google: 40% of the German Autobahn have speed limits, I guess 60% can count as "big parts"

Less than 10% of Autobahn outside of cities, though.

There's a difference between "most" and "big parts".

I'm commuting every day through the a section of the Autobahn where the speedlimit is 130km/h and some sections go as low as 100km/h. Posting about personal experiences is obviously equal to inflamatory trolling and should be voted as such.

Ok, then ignore the second part of my post. I'm asking what exactly is false about saying that big parts of the autobahn are unrestricted? Which part of that sentence is false?

They are, trying to get to the next speed-limited section as fast as they can ;)

Apparently the optimal speed for driving between superchargers is 160km/h... so the problem are the Model S drivers, not the car itself.

160km/h counts as "slow" on the Autobahn.

The average family sedan does 180km/h on there — so a Tesla at 160km/h will seem slow.

We are talking here about the Tesla S P85. It goes from 0 to 100km/h in 3.5 seconds and easily handles 220km/h. Sure acceleration from 100km/h to 200km/h is pretty slow at 12 seconds but does the average family sedan really have 700hp?

No – why should it? This is more about cruising speed. A family sedan won’t accelerate well at its 90HP, but it will easily stay at 180 to 200km/h.

Big difference: Those cars can maintain that performance until the tank is empty. Tesla's will go into overtemp protection and throttle you down significantly.

Get a Tesla on a race track with any decent mid-range car for a 200 mile race and see what happens.

Actually its quite slow: https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/model-s-laguna-s...

I somewhat agree -- you're right, $150K is actually too low for a real supercar, those are more like $350K and up.

But a Tesla is a supercar in terms of performance. No other BMW/Mercedes/Audi in the price range will touch its acceleration. It rivals a Lamborghini Aventador.

But overall you're right. Supercar isn't really the right word for Tesla.

In terms of acceleration they're certainly impressive, but does any Tesla qualify as a supercar when other indices of performance are considered? They're pretty heavy for one, and while they wear it extremely well, a low CoG can only do so much.

Maybe Teslas aren't supercars, but they're instead super cars?

There was an episode of Top Gear where the 3 presenters drove 3 supercars to a drag race. They've lost to everything there including a truck. I believe a used Civic and a few hundred/thousand dollars in parts will give you a car, which will also beat any BMW/Mercedess/Audi in acceleration.

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