Rollercoaster Driving: Reactions to Tesla’s “Insane Mode”

Adrenaline Fast Driving automotive careers

Tesla Motors is a company that is used to eliciting emotional responses from its products. These responses are generally joy at the prospect of an electric vehicle, or wonder at whether or not Tesla will change the landscape for auto sales college graduates with their new approach to sales. Now however, it seems like they are eliciting a new emotion: sheer terror!

To be fair, it’s the same kind of excited terror people experience on a roller coaster. It’s all due to a new feature which the company has named nothing less than “insane mode”.

Just What Is Insane Mode?

When Tesla introduced its dual motor Model S1 luxury Sedan in late 2014, they mentioned that it had a special new feature called insane mode. This gave people in mechanic courses, those pursuing other automotive careers and most drivers reason to wonder just what Tesla was up to.

Insane mode itself is just a button, similar to buttons that let your typical performance car slip into sport mode. This feature goes a little further – something like a cheat mode in a video game. To use insane mode, the car must be fully stopped and drivers must ensure they have enough road space ahead. When the insane mode button is pressed, the car will accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.2 seconds flat.

Is it Really Something Unique?

There are plenty of cars which already offer quick acceleration, and it has become a common sales point for sports cars and other high-performance vehicles. Previous incarnations of the S1 even offered the same 0 to 60 jump in just 5.9 seconds, which many considered extremely fast.

To put this increase in perspective, the new S1 is still a roomy 5-door luxury family sedan. It’s a big car, yet its new acceleration speed is comparable to some Ferraris and Lamborghinis. The McLaren F1, for example, takes 0.7 seconds longer to go from 0 to 60.

The S1, as with anything built by Tesla, is completely electric. It can go for 265 miles on an 85 kilowatt per hour battery. In addition to its radical speed ability, it is eco-friendly, safe for driving the family around (it scored a perfect 5.0 safety rating from the National Transportation Safety Board in the US) and accelerates like a sports car.

People Are Reacting

It turns out people weren’t expecting the S1 – and insane mode in particular – to live up to the marketing. Quite a few people were pleasantly shocked. Drag Times, a YouTube Channel which tests car speeds and acceleration times from various auto brands, decided to film passengers reacting to the sudden burst insane mode gives when activated.

They turned it into this compilation which has been making the rounds online for a few days now:

The passengers seem both shocked and thrilled with insane mode, and now the whole internet is aware of this interesting addition to the S1. Because of that, it’s safe to say that this new car has met its objective.

In what driving situations could insane mode be useful?

Form is submitting