Despite a flattening adoption curve, we currently have the most competitive EV market ever. Multiple manufacturers offer 800-volt architectures, just about every automaker sells at least one, often multiple, EVs, and the Tesla Supercharger networks has been cracked wide open with other automakers hopping aboard the system and starting to offer NACS support. In contrast, Tesla has just given the Model S sedan another facelift, one that probably won’t turn sales around, considering this sedan’s been on the market since 2012.
Right out of the gate, the first things you’ll notice are the new Plaid-specific front-and-rear bumpers with more aggressive reliefs and styling elements. Considering the Plaid used to look basically identical to the regular Model S, this is surely a welcome upgrade for people who want to show off. At the same time, more aerodynamic wheel designs help boost the range of the standard Model S from 405 miles to 410 miles, and the Plaid sees a boost from 348 miles to 368, while a new frost blue color is, indeed, blue.
As for toys, the updated Model S finally gets a camera on the front fascia like, you know, a $27,570 Nissan Kicks SR. Matrix headlight beams join the party, although they’ve been available in Europe for years. The dashboard and door cards now feature the same sort of ambient lighting you get in a Model 3, and active noise cancellation has been allegedly improved.
As for under the skin, new bushings as part of an updated suspension package are on deck, but that’s about as far as mechanical tweaks go. At the same time, Tesla has hiked pricing by $5,000, meaning the standard Model S now starts at $90,880 including freight, and the Plaid starts at $101,380 including freight. It’s all thoroughly underwhelming to me, and if this is what we can expect for the next few years, the Model S is only going to fall further behind its competition.
Starting ages ago, Tesla fans really loved calling established brands legacy automakers, but now Tesla’s first mass-market product is, in many ways, the legacy car in the entire EV landscape. It’s been around for 13 whole years, and while it’s seen two major updates in that time, it just isn’t fresh enough.
We’ve been seeing the same shape since Lamborghini still made the Gallardo; people can now buy electric sedans that are even quicker than the Plaid and better all-around performers; almost everyone who’s wanted a Model S already owns one; and existing owners who want something new are absolutely spoiled for choice.
For example, if you want a glamorous electric sedan that’s spiritually a successor to Tesla’s once-groundbreaking liftback, the Lucid Air is on the market with Tesla-beating range and charging, great suspension tuning, loads of interior space, competitive pricing against the Model S Long Range, and none of the baggage.
Want either a hatch or Plaid-beating acceleration and aren’t sensitive on price? The updated Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo has an amazing charging curve and proper handling, and the Taycan Turbo GT is a far more impressive overall performance package than Tesla’s quickest vehicle, but they are considerably more expensive than comparable Model S trims.
Yes, if you’re in it for straight-line speed and your local dragstrip has a long shutdown, the Model S Plaid is still the quickest new car you can get for the money, but it’s worth noting that, especially these days, it also comes with some notable compromises compared to the competitive set.
At this point, the Tesla Model S is a dinosaur [Ed Note: I’s weird calling something with the Model S’s level of technology a “dinosaur,” especially given the rolling updates it’s received, but you can’t argue that the competition hasn’t caught up and that this shape is a little too familiar by now. -DT], and another round of updates isn’t going to go very far. Tesla doesn’t seem interested in completely replacing it, which feels like a mistake. Cox Automotive’s Q1 EV sales report found that Tesla had sold 1,280 Model S sedans in America over that period, down 69 percent year-over-year and trailing sales of other similarly-priced luxury EVs like the Porsche Macan Electric (3,339 units), the Rivian R1S (5,357 units), and the BMW i5 (1,899 units). The Model S has enjoyed a good run, but it feels like the time to turn the page is coming soon.
Top graphic credit: Tesla
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So now we’ve traded a handlebar moustache for Eddie Munster’s widow’s peak?
Also, Porsche and Audi want their humpback back.
Rumor has it that in the next facelift, its going to get a Hitl—I mean, Chaplin moustache
This has always been a very attractive car and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I’d never buy one, but I’ll concede that it’s easily the best design Tesla has ever come up with.
Exactly this.
When I look at the front end of any Tesla (excluding Cybertruck), all I see is Neo from the Matrix with his mouth grown together. I can’t get past it no matter how good the rest of car looks.
the original grill was better.
Agreed. I hate defending Tesla for anything, but I have to give a modicum of credit when any automakers say “this is still adequate” and leave something mostly untouched.
I mean, let’s be real, for conservation and generally being less wasteful, cars would be far more standardized and unchanging over time. It’s “only” capitalism that means they have to be continually changed and such.
While I would think the price should/could be lowered given the lack of changes, that’s about my biggest complaint here. They look good.
Sure, but one could argue refreshes or redesigns of outstanding designs can still result in worthy new designs in their own right. E.g. BMW E23 to E38.
That is an excellent example. And now I’m sad because BMWs don’t look like that anymore…
I’m just waiting with baited breath until the Tesla Model F is released. The F is for fascism.
S3XYF
They’d need a model A first. Or M.
“Despite a flattening adoption curve…”
Only in North America.
Wouldn’t have bought one before Musk outed himself as the high priest of tech asshats. Still won’t bury one. For a hundred large I’d go for a Lucid or a Lexus LC500.
Ketamine must be a helluva drug.
Investors got the CT and Twitter instead of the obvious thing for a car company, actual viable product.
Buying a Model S in the big 2025 is much like what my favorite Pittsburg based sports youtuber said when the rumors of Aaron Rodgers signing for the Steelers first emerged: Too old and not worth the baggage that comes with. That being said, I’ve always really liked the Model S and once they fully depreciate to old 7-series/S-class money I’d be willing to take a punt on one especially since the aftermarket seems to be quite good for performance upgrades.
Gazing upon that last photo, it just dawned on me that Tesla has out-Panamera’d the original Panamera.
I’d still prefer the latter.
The Panamera has ebbed and flowed. The first gen one was always awkward looking and I don’t think it’s aged particularly well either. It always confused me that Porsche couldn’t get the coupe-ified sedan proportions right when Audi, who’s under the same VAG umbrella and there for them to collaborate with, has always been great at them. Say what you will about the state of Audi today or their less than inspired current sea of weird looking egg shaped crossovers but the A7 has always been a stunning car and still is today.
The second generation got a lot closer and I think is the most conventionally attractive Panamera. I think it’s about the closest they could get to making a sedan resemble a 911, and they’re currently depreciating pretty hard due to the new one coming out. I think a certified one in the 40s is an incredible buy right now.
The third gen is a mess. It’s overstyled, the new Porsche headlights don’t really work for me, and overall I think it just looks bloated and too busy. In very German fashion they’ve also somehow found a way to make it weigh 5,000 pounds on top of all that. No thank you!
I’m one of those weirdos that never actively hated the original Panamera’s unique rear-end styling, although it has certainly improved since. Leave it to the Germans to produce an ICE vehicle that weighs as much or more than a BEV Model S whilst also costing more to boot.
At least they use a full steering wheel as standard, so that’s something!
Ze Germans seem rather overconfident in their abilities to engineer the weight out of a car. While I haven’t driven any of the household name behemoths (the new M5, the C63, RS6 Avant, etc) I am just as confident that they can’t…and the consensus amongst the people who have driven them is the same.
Can’t say I hate the new rear lights, but something (esp the last pic in silver) just screams AI generated about this refresh. Seems like the whole car was spat out by Midjourney….
Volkswagen sold basically the same Beetle from 1938 to 2003. Honda introduced the Super Cub in 1958 and you can still buy one that looks more or less the same in 2025.
I think part of the reason the Beetle persisted for so long is that, if you really think about it, the actual technology in cars didn’t change a ton through most of the Beetle’s run in the US and other developed countries. If you bought a new car in 1950 or so, it would have a carburetor, drum brakes, no a/c standard, a manual transmission, or an automatic with four or less gears. In 1970, the same was largely true. By the Beetle’s last year in the US (1979), things had changed. Japanese cars were more efficient and practical, and the Americans were getting better at small cars. Fuel injection was slowly replacing carbs, and catalytic converters had entered the game. The hatchback form factor made the Beetles design almost comically impractical. I should know, I have a 72 Super Beetle.
As for the remaining years in production up until 2003, those were largely in developing nations where the Beetle’s simple, rugged design and ubiquity made it the perfect choice when dealing with rough roads, or no roads at all. Being the default taxi in Mexico helped too.
While I genuinely appreciate the idea of keeping the same platform around for a long time, Tesla’s problem is that they were the big innovator and disruptor in the EV space. People expect new and exciting things from them, not the same platform. Again, I’m not arguing against keeping platforms going for a long time, I think it’s great if you have a compelling product and people keep buying it year after year. It’s better for the consumer (price) and for the environment as well. Unfortunately that’s not really the image Tesla is going for, and now it’s the OEMs that have the new platforms and designs that people seem to want.
fElon just wants to keep the Model S around long enough to stick it to the Dodge Durango.
Elmo is a fucking nazi and you shouldn’t give him a penny of your hard earned money, ever.
Umm…as long as you are paying your double-taxed taxes in the US, you already do. (Although this is only technically accurate, you are actually helping to fund roughly 100k people having decent paying jobs more than you are “giving” Elon a penny).
Politics aside, SpaceX/Starlink just completed its first constellation of direct-to-cell satellites, btw. This, along with the standard Starlink system, is doing far more for humanity than donating “a cup of coffee a day” to Sally Struthers, or making a stink on the internet about him being a Nazi. It’s legitimate help to rural areas globally and unarguably saving lives.
I don’t give a shit about Tesla, but I do care about the work that SpaceX is doing, and it’s really important stuff. You should be proud/happy about helping others, not focusing on some soap opera drama crap.
But, as always, you do you. 🙂
More apologist BS. He’s a fucking nazi and the world knows it, whether you want to fellate your favorite billionaire or not. I don’t care whether, in his relentless drive to make money, he provides some (absolutely unintentional) benefit to someone besides himself. He’s garbage, and people shouldn’t support him.
“Soap opera drama crap” is a ridiculously pathetic, disingenuous lie. You do you, cupcake.
You and me would probably dominate in doubles pickleball, I bet.
I don’t doubt that Starlink is doing a lot of good for a lot of people. What concerns me is Elon having an on/off switch that can cut off the service to certain people or regions at his whim. That’s Dr. Evil levels of power that no single person should have, let alone someone as ethically challenged as Elon. The more the world comes to rely on it, the scarier the situation becomes.
I suppose he could, but there are about 1,000 other people that also hold that same kind of power, if not way more.
If one decides to worry about stuff like that on a regular basis, they are going to go bonkers.
I believe you take the wins, appreciate the wins of others, and then figure out what’s for dinner. Life shouldn’t be about existential dread and cataclysmic fear.
Like, this shit going on today between Iran and Israel. It’s not good. A whole shit ton of people are gonna die, and the US (which I’m sure is already low-key involved) is gonna get publicly involved, for nothing else than that sweet military profiteering.
What is one supposed to do about it? Nothing. Watch some golf, let the dog on the couch for once…something like that. The rest is just migraine inducing noise.
Starlink is also used to help Putin invade Ukraine. So, no, F Elon, and there’s no taking the good with the bad, any more than hanging one of Hitler’s paintings because it’s pretty would be justifiable.
Does it come with a scratch resistant paint option and a kit to remove tags from the car?
Or on of those “stand back from the car!” alarms which shouts out “I am not a Nazi and it was not a Nazi salute?”
There is a very funny court case just started in France where a dozen French Tesla owners are asking for their cars to be bought back, at the prices they were paid for, because Elon Musk’s behaviour does not allow them “peaceful possession” of their cars.
Thing is, they might win.
The main argument is Tesla has always been deliberately associated with Elon Musk, and that now he has in the last year started (among other things) broadcasting through X, far right political views and his support for European far-right political parties, Tesla owners are now seen as being far right.
Which for many of them is very upsetting.
It is also physically dangerous because there have been cases of things being thrown at Teslas and Tesla garages set alight.
And under French law “peaceful possession” is part of the lifetime sales guarantee as much as “hidden vices” protection.
The second, weaker argument, is that Musk’s behaviour has effectively appropriated back parts of Tesla’s cars without payment — owners thought they were buying to make a “green”gesture, but now Musk has taken the whole brand and linked it with the far-right, including cars already sold…
The leading lawyer, Patrick Klugman, is seen as a rising “tenor of the bar” as they say in France, one of the deputy mayors in the socialist party running Paris municipality, and the grandson of people killed by the Nazis.
Wow, what an ugly car.
Until there is some massive change in battery tech, why would you change that sedan?
Full EVs are a niche market, and sedans even more so. The article even states that in a whole quarter, the segment moved roughly 12k units, including Rivian (which is definitely not a sedan). Whoopdiedoo.
Tweak and squeak profits until there is an impetus to do more.
I would say the Model S has seen 2 minor refreshes. For the exterior I believe the changes have been limited to the front and rear bumpers and lights.
I agree this isn’t going to change market realities for the Model S. It seems like a waste of an assembly line but Tesla has far more production capacity than they need.
There is no way that Tesla could afford to make a new Model S, so yeah some mild updates is all we are going to see. It would cost way too much to develop an even heavily updated model at the sales they are seeing, and it is highly unlikely that a new version would actually increase sales, definitely not to the point where they could every have a hope of amortizing the costs of development and tooling.
In 2025 you wouldn’t make a new EV sedan if you are a small automaker like Tesla. What they really need is a couple more crossovers – and to actually learn to do platform sharing.
Yup, we are even further away from sedans being a volume segment than we were back when the S arrived, when it did make some sense.
Yeah, if they couldn’t do anything other than mid-cycle type refreshes to the Model 3 and Y, they definitely aren’t going to roll out a new Model S.
I wonder what that says for the future of the company if they can no longer afford to develop entirely new models/platforms.
Well something in the S’s segment no longer makes financial sense for many, if any MFG to develop. The large sedan segment is all but dead and isn’t going to have large volumes anytime soon.
The more telling thing is the fact that they don’t appear to be developing an all new 3/Y. Of course they did have the money to do so, but instead Elon thought it would be more fun to throw cash into a dumpster fire. When that wasn’t enough of a distraction/waste of money he decided that a dedicated robo-taxi would be better than putting their money into their volume seller, or developing something in an actual high volume segment.
Last quarter selling credits was the only thing keeping them out of the red ink. It will be interesting to see those numbers for Q2.
I’m not a Tesla fan, but the fact that the Model S is even vaguely competitive in today’s market is astonishing, and just goes to emphasize how far ahead of the competition it was back in 2012.
As noted in the article, even today, you can’t buy a faster dragster without spending more. There are very few options with more range, and you won’t get more range without spending roughly the same amount of money.
Yes, it’s old (both visually and technologically) and I don’t want one, but mainly because of the BS that goes with the brand. Buy a new Model S and you’re getting proven technology – the same cannot be said of many other options on the market today.
I’m sure they’ll sell dozens!
I’d imagine more used ones change hands annually than new ones.
I always like the looks of the Model S. The X and Y, not so much.
It is a good looking car, but that is about all it has going for it.
Same, I honestly think this has aged incredibly well. It’s still the best-looking BEV out there IMO.
I wouldn’t be caught dead owning one though. I have so many better things to do with 100 grand.
Looking at it as if politics do not exist.
The exterior being the same is not great but the biggest let down is that none of the technology they created for the Cybertruck made it to the S. Namely the higher voltage systems. They also left that out of the Model 3 and Y refresh.
Without those changes, it seems really difficult to justify a new S purchase over a 3. I’d like to see a back to back review of the two. Especially a base S vs whatever the high performance 3 is.
It wouldn’t be my choice, but other than Lucid, it’s tough to argue anyone has truly caught up. 400 miles of range is still all too rare.
Only with much larger batteries.
Turn the page?
Musk walked into a government, all strung out from his work. Then he felt the eyes upon him, DOGE is headed by this jerk. He pretends it doesn’t bother him, but he wanted all the perks. Most times we can’t watch him tweet, other times we do. All the same old cliches, like “Pedo Guy” and “Trump Part 2!” Then he bit the hand that fed him, now it seems like he’s so screwed.
Imagine buying this thing in the year 2025, for multiple reasons.
Is this now the “oldest new car” second only to the GM vans that sell *because* they’re dinosaurs?
Depends, do we count the current Nissan Z as old since it is still on the same basic platform as the 370z with just styling and powertrain updates? Otherwise there is the Durango which started the WD generation in 2011
Add in another Nissan to this list with the D40/D41 Frontier – 2004, and still going.
Albeit there were some minor tweaks during the D40’s life, the D41 reuses the chassis, and drivetrain from the D40.
Wasn’t the 350Z before it also on that platform?
The phrase you’re looking for is
zenith of vanswell-optimized.It’s as old as the Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera was at the end of its run ( 14 years).