The new Tesla Model S Long Range has received its official EPA range rating, and it is showing an improvement in efficiency over last year’s version.
As we reported last weekend, Tesla strangely downgraded the range of the brand-new Model S Long Range.
When first announced, it was supposed to have 412 miles of range, and Elon Musk even announced that during the delivery event on Thursday, but it was updated on Tesla’s website to 405 miles just a few days later.
As we noted, Tesla’s reference to the range was also updated from “estimate” to “EPA estimate” – leading us to believe that Tesla had received the official EPA rating for the Long Range and the agency website was going to be updated shortly.
That’s also strange in itself since Tesla needs the official EPA rating before starting deliveries, and it looks like Tesla started with Model S Plaid deliveries instead of the new Long Range version.
Yet, it looks like the EPA is first releasing the Long Range official rating first with no word on Plaid’s official rating for now.
The EPA has now updated its website to add the official rating for the new 2021 Tesla Model S Long Range:
It shows a slight bump in efficiency to 124 MPGe for city driving and 115 MPGe for highway driving – resulting in a 120 MPGe combined.
Tesla has updated the battery pack of the new Model S with the updated 2021 version, but the automaker hasn’t release many details about it, including the energy capacity.
However, the new EPA rating is consistent with a similar energy capacity as last year, and the slightly longer range being achieved through an the efficiency bump.
We did previously note that one of the main goals of the Palladium program, which is behind the powertrain of the new Model S and Model X, was to improve efficiency.
Of course, the main focus has been the new power efficiency as Tesla has been able to fit a very powerful tri-motor powertrain in a fairly small package.
The new Model S Long Range starts at $79,990 in the US and new orders are being delivered later this year as Tesla needs to work through a backlog after deliveries of the new Model S were delayed several months.
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Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
