Elon's D Can't Hang with Dodge, Tesla P85D Slower than Hellcat Charger

Jack and Patrick,

Impressed by your allegiance to the candle, but I think I'll go with the electric light.

If Tesla wanted to build a one-trick-pony, they would have. But the D is a lot more than just fast. Let's face it, electric drive is the future of the automobile.

I would like to add the following:
You mentioned that those interested in racing do not care about fuel economy. Then you went on and cited that the Model S price is higher than the Dodge. If we follow your own rationale, then you do cite pricing difference but you neglected the important price of fuel and maintenance to come up with a realistic ROI between the two. The maintenance itself on the Model S is something impressive. I can guarantee you if you put over 100,000 miles in this Helcat after your racing, like any good combustion engine car exposed to acceleration, you will experience all sorts of leaking, water pump failure, etc. Basically at 200,000 miles of racing your Dodge would ready to be trashed. Look at reports of the Model S exposed to over 500,000 miles without major maintenance needs. To prove that, compare the maintenance offered in the Dodge vs the Model S; (probably) 3years/36,000 miles vs 8 years/unlimited miles.

Is this article a joke? I know you Americans don't bother about the rest of world but the Dodge marque is considered as a badly made joke, styled by a committee consisting of Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Andrea Bocelli. Whatever your view on Tesla, and I am no EV fanboy, it is amazing that a new company has made a car that looks good, handles well and is well built. In America!!!!

Hah Hah! With the Hellcat's rating of mpg for city/hwy of 13/21 and a fuel tank of 18.5 gallons, the Tesla can actually drive much farther without needing a recharge...And if any Hellcat owner wants to actually have fun driving their car, it will probably get less than 170 miles before needing to find a gas station again.
By the way, 99%+ of Hellcat owners will never go above 155 mph, much less go 204 mph, and what will you do after 5 years or 100,000 miles of hard driving, not to mention the $30,000 of gas you used or the roughly 500+ gas station visits? Hardly a comparison to Tesla's 8 year unlimited mile warranty and topping the battery every night at your home for just a few dollars.
The author is right in that these two cars should not be compared, Tesla literally blows the Hellcat off the line. Let's be honest, at the stoplight very very few people actually care that the Hellcat can eventually pass the Tesla way down the road, BUT every one cares about what happens when the light turns green. So stop kidding yourselves, because deep down, you know that to be true. Save your money and buy the Tesla P85D instead.

So ill just wait 3 years for a certified pre-owned P85D to sell lease for 60k and then go out and drive it.... it'll still use less gas than that ICE vehicle thingy in red there...or i don't care about the cost, or i do. no i don't.

I am both surprised and disappointed by many of the comments here. Both cars are phenomenal achievements in their respective areas. The Tesla Model S is hands down the best electric car on the market, which is why GM is trying to make it illegal to sell it in Michigan. The D version adds all wheel drive and more power, which certainly is a trend in both performance vehicles (McLaren P1, La Ferrari, Nissan GTR) and daily drivers in inclement weather. Yes an electric motor has phenomenal torque across the rpm range but in a vehicle on a road there is only so much traction available and even though internal combustion engines may have less torque, things like 8 speed transmissions and gearing can help minimize the difference. The Hellcat Charger is completely different, it is designed for someone to race and then drive home, it has more power than any other sedan made anywhere. If you don't like the interior or build quality, good buy something else, it has improved a ton over where it used to be and by the way racers want to go fast, the rest is less important. At a price of $65k for the Hellcat charger, it will be very difficult to buy one at sticker price for the first year as they will all be sold to racers and collectors. For those that talk about cost savings with the tesla, you need to either rethink your argument. With a sticker price difference of over $65k even if you drive the Charger (way more than a average one will see, lets say 18k miles per year) and only squeaked out 12-15 mpg, you would still get past the 8 year mark where the Tesla warranty runs out even at $4/gallon, in fact you likely are looking at a battery replacement around year 10-12 about the time the $ is even. Then you could add in depreciation where the Tesla will go down as most cars do and collector muscle cars typically depreciate significantly less. Both cars are truly awesome achievements that were not possible even a couple of years ago, there is really no need to knock one down to try and make the other look better. This is a great time for automotive enthusiasts, enjoy it!

No performance enthusiast cares about EV technology....umm the two fastest track cars in the world (the McLaren P1 and the Porsche 918) are utilizing EV technology along with their gasoline engines. Comparing the Tesla Model S (next to the P1 arguably the most technological cars on the planet) to an already crappy overweight car with a larger engine is like apples to microprocessors. The Hellcat is in total faster...in a straight line..but a Honda Civic with about 10 grand could destroy it too. Does that mean that the Honda Civic has surpassed the Hellcat? No. I'm a huge Mustang enthusiast and love gasoline performance, but hillbilly idiots like this author are just an embarrassment to all enthusiasts. Don't hate the Tesla. It cpuld very well save the future of gasoline performance cars to be able to exist in the future.

P85D - an elitist car for an intelligent, discriminating buyer who has a perfect world. Hellcat - a bar room brawler which demands irrational, emotional response for the rest of us with dysfunctional lives. I am glad my world is real and not a fabrication of my ego to feel superior to others.

It isn't exactly a perfect comparison. Tesla's car is a luxury Sedan. Chevrolet's is a muscle car. It's like comparing a $50,000,000 private jet to a MiG. If you want a race car, the Chevy wins hands down, but most people who want race cars don't buy them with 5 seats. The winner here is whichever one can be the jack of all trades. Personally, I'd say that that is the Tesla, although the fact that it costs twice as much may have something to do with that.

And if we were to remove the speed-governing and change the rear-end ratio (or add a transmission, something that Tesla really needs to consider doing), the P85D would be EXTREMELY fast, in terms of top speed. Treading far into hyper-car territory.

Calculations seem to indicate a top speed of somewhere between 250 and 255 MPH, putting this fictional-but-plausible modified Tesla in an entirely different tier of insanity than the Hellcat. This is due to aerodynamics. The Tesla's Coefficient of drag of 0.24 is almost literally second-to-none (Mercedes has claimed 0.22 on I forget which car, but when tested, it was a modest 0.31, while the Tesla's was 0.24). Basically, A Tesla has 70% the power and 70% the drag area of a basic Bugatti Veyron, which should give it a similar top speed.

Of course, even 155 mph is an insane top speed on a road. Really, no top speed over 170 is probably even remotely practical anywhere but long, empty stretches of the Autobahn.

Who cares if the Hellcat 0.001 seconds faster than a Tesla..... It's still a dodge

Oooh. Sour grapes.

So, you Hellcat enthusiasts can have your quarter mile glory. I will have been ahead of you for several seconds, dropped into the right lane at a comfortable cruising speed, breathing rarefied air while ensconced in the luxury of my Tesla cabin. Everyone will have seen you struggling, yet crushed at the light, and they will be embarrassed for you as you *finally* ROAR past, foot still on the floor. (sadly shaking head)

And I don't think anyone mentioned .... we all need to start making choices to SAVE OUR EARTH.
Yes, 0-60 in 3.2s, quiet luxury, the aesthetics, and owning a technological marvel make the choice easy.

Want to make it a fair race. Turn off the Hellcat, then start it when light goes green.... Electric motor doesn't need to "IDLE".

Also, when an electric car stops it doesn't IDLE(waste energy), like IC.
apples to oranges, two different ways to get moving.
IC = caveman, electrons = 2014+,
as RAGE would say, WAKE UP !!!!!
If you don't think the Telsa D is a big fat "D" (you know what I mean) in the face of IC, you are not awake from your IC dream yet.

There is a lot of bias here. I have rebuilt a few 5.0 Mustangs and now own a RWD Model S.

What I think the Dodge/Internal Combustion Engine crowd seems to not understand is the day-to-day real world application of high powered EV. The power is just so much more accessible and useable than an ICE car. You can just have more fun day to day, the, "instant torque" thing is real and to say a gas car does not have instant torque might be misplaced to some extent. Just get your but in a Tesla and feel it for yourself. A lot of muscle car guys like V8's for the perceived low end torque vs. a turbo V6 for example. A Tesla is more removed from a V8 than a V8 is from a V6.

I also like how I don't feel I am abusing my Tesla when I accelerate hard and often, I just don't like being hard on a gas motor and the trans often.

There are some race situations where the Dodge wins, but outside of initial cost, the Tesla wins in so many ways:
-Safer
-About 5 times more efficient, and more than 5 times cheaper to fuel.
-Seating for 7 available
-About 4 times the storage
-AWD and amazing traction control, a great year-round car
-Aluminum construction

I bet there will be some P85+'s out there for cheap too now that people want the D.

The downfall for me with Tesla is that is really makes combustion cars look like a school project or something, I've lost interest in the cars I used to really like, sans a Shelby 427 Cobra and a Unimog.

Thanks for the 15 minutes of entertainment all. I love the debates over what's faster on paper. I used to own a Trans Am, sure it's not the quickest car, but I won many races. Raced nitro Honda Civics and STI's that were in the 9's quarter miles. I'm not sure why people like me love v8's, maybe it's the growl instead of baby crying scream of a 4cyl at VVT rpm's. We've been losing drag races to rice burners for decades. Sure my slow Trans Am couldn't beat a Civic off the line, or beat an STI on the backroads, but it left them all behind on the highway. I was looking forward to buying a supercharged Camaro ZL1, and bought the Tesla p85 instead. All around quiet, consistently faster, no guilt for stomping the pedal everywhere. Oh and the convenience of charging at home for 1/3rd the cost is under rated by gas owners. For those skeptical, Tesla RWD bests my AWD suv in mud, snow and ice traction, RWD ICE sports cars can't compete. I'm interested in EV's, saving the planet when convenient sure, but would never have bought a Prius, Leaf or Volt over a Camaro ZL1 or Hellcat. The Tesla is a fast daily driver, beats most everything, the stingray, ZL1 and Hellcat are nice weekend cars. Even the BMW i8 and Audi 8's, are weekend cars with a limited milage lifespan and no real practicality. There's a practical reason why you can see Tesla's at a Home Depot parking lot, or stuffing 15 bags of thanksgiving groceries in them, but none of the other sports cars. The whole deal with replacing batteries in 10 years is a pointless argument. In 15,000 miles I've lost 1 mile of range, whop-de-do, my Acura lost more than that in MPG drop. Nissan just built terrible batteries, Tesla knows good batteries and even has a program to buy back your used battery for solar storage in the future. Even so, the first Honda and Prius battery replacements end up with a better capacity and cheaper prices going from NiCD, NiMH to LiPo. Sure if you live and die by the drag strip, hellcat makes financial sense for those guys. Actually no, it doesn't make sense, I'd rather by a STI and nitrous the crap out of it for half the price of a Hellcat. For someone who want's just 1 car to be both the daily driver, and sports car, Tesla has them beat. If you want all the bells and whistles, vibration seats, kiddie back up alarm, dvd entertainment, trashcan detector and 10 cup holders mean more to you, just give in and buy a minivan.

Hellcat uses, wastes and burns gas while the Tesla accelerates quicker using none.

hellcat sucks

If I drove 200 miles an hour in the US roads either I will have a collection of speeding tickets or locked up in Jail. Why on earth would I want Hellcat ? Perhaps as a showpiece in my garage ? I don't drive on race tracks or do drag racing either.

But I know I would never get a speeding ticket for accelerating faster than a Lamborghini
.

Baaahahaha, hellcat gonna trounce and stomp the Tesla d eh? You see that drag race? Baaaahahahaha

ill still take a awd rt charger at somewere in the 30-40k range were I can "play around on the streets" and then go were ever I want and instead of spending who knows how long pluging in my toy car spend maybe what 5 min at a gas station. I would consider after all this time having combustion engine and filling our gas takes that it just comes 2nd nature. as to playing around with several people on the street and then b4 going out for a trip or vacation I have to go plug in the car and then hope that along my trip they have a place to plug me in. maybe when there become more charging stations. to make it more relevant. still ask were is tesla's numbers from the ring? or cross country times California to maine? cannon ball run anyone?

In other news, dragsters and funny cars found to be faster than the P85D Model S. Take THAT Tesla!

hellcat? LOL eventually it'll be remembered as hell-dinosaur, like all other fuel guzzling engines.