As if Tesla Motors doesn’t have enough good things going for it, what with the “Gigafactory” and “Model 3” making headlines all the time, now it turns out that the “Model S” is actually semi-amphibious. The discovery was made when a video capturing how a “Model S” drove right through a flooded tunnel better than all the other cars did surfaced on YouTube. The development was so astounding that Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk himself Tweeted about it.
We *def* don't recommended this, but Model S floats well enough to turn it into a boat for short periods of time. Thrust via wheel rotation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 19, 2016
For the record, it is generally never a good idea to drive a car through flood tunnels regardless of what kind of vehicle it is. As Digital Trends wrote when covering the issue, drivers will most likely damage their car if they decide to submerge their vehicles under water, even partially. Even Musk himself said that neither he nor his company recommend using the “Model S” as a boat, particularly because it costs about $70,000 to get one.
However, it is still a rather startling development to learn that a vehicle that has never been marketed as having amphibious properties was able to display such capabilities over water; an electric car, no less. The “Model S” was able to float over the flooded surface for a short while and the rotation of the wheels during acceleration served to provide enough propulsion for the vehicle to move as if gliding over the water.
Market Watch explained that the reason the Tesla vehicle was able to perform such a feat was due to the sealed chamber of the battery and motor. The “Model S’ is heavier than most luxury cars, but the extra protective layer was also able to provide the vehicle buoyancy. The company already accounted for flooding when they decided to add the feature, but it was only meant to protect the internal mechanisms, not make the vehicles into an emergency water craft.
