Who says EVs can’t plow through water? A team of engineers, commercial divers, and enthusiasts successfully drove an electric retrofit Toyota LandCruiser across Darwin Harbour, an over 4 mile (7 km) trip. The EV was submerged entirely underwater, navigating depths up to nearly 100 feet (30 m).
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Last summer, Tesla introduced both a new and bigger 90 kWh battery pack and the ‘Ludicrous mode’ upgrade for a higher level of performance on the already insane Model S. The automaker offers the upgrade for a $10,000 premium when configuring a Model S P90D or as a retrofit for Model S P85D owners who, at the time, had just witnessed their less than 1-year old cars already outperformed by the new version.
Tesla ended up significantly reducing the price of the retrofit to just $5,000 for the P85D and now for the first time, the automaker is offering the upgrade as an aftermarket retrofit for the Model S P90D – meaning that someone configuring the Tesla’s top of the line vehicle could decide to pass on the ‘Ludicrous mode’, but later add it for the same price plus labor.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company can’t offer the Autopilot as a retrofit. There are a few aftermarket options available to add driver assist features to a car, but nothing close to Tesla’s ‘Autosteer’ and ‘Auto Lane Change’ features… until now.
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On Friday, Tesla opened pre-orders for the ‘Ludicrous’ battery pack retrofit upgrade to Model S P85D owners. Tesla announced the ‘Ludicrous’ mode over 2 months ago as a $10,000 option on Tesla’s top performance model, which had become the P90D at that point since the company announced a battery pack capacity increase to 90 kWh alongside the Ludicrous option. The new package enables faster acceleration: 0 to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds.
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