2019 Tesla Model S on 2040-cars

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Even hardcore Tesla fans can get stranded sometimes

Driving a few laps around the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in a Tesla Model S can be quite a treat. Driving between Los Angeles and Las Vegas? Sometimes, not so much. The fine folks at Teslarati had the good fortune of taking the all-electric luxury sedan for a few spins around the racetrack near Sin City, and found that the Tesla handled "quite well" and was able to reach a top speed of 110 miles per hour on one of the straightaways. And the car turned in a best time of two minutes and 17 seconds around the 2.4-mile circuit. Still, the car started limiting its own power as early as its second lap, and by the seventh lap or so, the car brought down its power capacity to about 25 percent in order to conserve juice. The drivers were able to make do because a Tesla Supercharger fast-charging station was 11 miles away and they could get a good charge in about an hour. Less of a treat was the car's performance between Vegas and Southern California. Despite being big Tesla fans (the driver writes for Teslarati, after all), the unexpected appearance of 35-mile-per-hour headwinds and the totally expected elevation changes between Las Vegas and Barstow, CA proved particularly problematic. The driver slowed down to 40 mph and dropped the Model S' power consumption to something in the 400-500 wh/m range, but still, our intrepid explorers ran out of juice and were stranded beside the road until Tesla kindly arranged for a tow. D'oh!

Elon Musk is Vanity Fair's number one 'disrupter'

Elon Musk's leadership of Tesla Motors has transferred well to pop culture. In this case, the electric-vehicle maker's CEO has popped up as Number 1 on Vanity Fair's annual "disrupters" list. Musk jumped from No. 5 last year and for 2014 came in ahead of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Apple's Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive; and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Pretty healthy company. Vanity Fair pegged Musk's net worth at $12.9 billion, thanks in part to Tesla's stock climbing up about 70 percent in the past year (despite a recent dip) and has surged by a factor of 16 since the initial public offering in 2010. It also can't hurt that Tesla scored about $1.2 billion in government incentives when it agreed earlier this month to build its gigafactory in Nevada. Additionally, Vanity Fair feted Musk for his involvement in both space-exploration company SpaceX and home solar-panel provider SolarCity and described Musk's marital status as "complicated." VF just loves that stuff. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that Musk was the only auto executive to end up on either the publication's "disrupters" list or its "powers that be" list. The latter was headed by Fox's Rupert Murdoch, Walt Disney's Bog Iger and Comcast's Brian Roberts and Steve Burke. You can read Vanity Fair's write-up of Musk here.

Time slots Tesla Model S among best inventions of 2012

Time Magazine has released its list of the best inventions of 2012, and while a few automotive products made the cut, the Tesla Model S was the only vehicle to nab the honor this year. The magazine cites the electric sedan's sexy aesthetics, lofty 265-mile range and touch-screen cabin controls as reasons for the laurel, though Tesla's network of supercharger stations certainly factored in as well. This is just the latest in long list of accolades for the Model S. As you may recall, Motor Trend recently called the EV the most important car since the Ford Model T, and Automobile Magazine named the five-door its Automobile of the Year.
A total of 25 inventions made the Time list in all, including the self-inflating tires we saw from Goodyear earlier this year. From whimsical indoor clouds crafted by Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde to a potentially life-saving in-home HIV test, the selections showcase the diversity of human innovation. Check out the complete list here.