--- title: "Elon Musk Escalates Beef With Porsche’s Electric Car" description: "In a Thursday evening tweet, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed his plans to bring the Model S to one of the world's toughest race car tracks." date: "2019-09-06" modified: "2019-09-06" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-porsche-electric-car" categories: - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "elon musk" - "porsche" - "tesla" - "the digest" --- # Elon Musk Escalates Beef With Porsche’s Electric Car ![In a Thursday evening tweet, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed his plans to bring the Model S to one of the world's toughest race car tracks.]() *\Image: Porsche\* ## Double Down Remember the Taycan, the all-electric Porsche that Tesla CEO Elon Musk [publicly ridiculed]() yesterday? Now Musk is doubling down. In a [Thursday evening tweet](), Musk revealed plans to bring Tesla's Model S to the Nürburgring, a notoriously difficult race track in Germany. It's almost certainly a direct challenge to Porsche, which took its Taycan prototype to the same track only [weeks ago](). ## Lap Dance The Nürburgring has long been used as a way to measure and compare the performance of many of the fastest cars in the world. The Taycan's record lap time for a four-door, all-electric sports car was impressive: seven minutes and 42 seconds. Reading between the lines, though, it sounds as though Musk thinks the Model S can beat that time. ## 2 Fast 2 Furious The fastest lap time — [6 minutes and five seconds]() — by a non-road-legal electric car on the legendary track [was snatched]() by Volkswagen's impressive [ID R electric hypercar]() earlier this year. For comparison, the 2019 crown for the fastest combustion engine-powered and road legal lap time goes to Lamborghini's Aventador SVJ at 6 minutes and 55 seconds. As the *BBC*'s *Top Gear* [points out](), Tesla has never previously measured the lap times of any of its sports cars — not even the upcoming Roadster — on the Nürburgring, including the Model S. **READ MORE:** [Tesla to bring Model S to Nürburgring race track, presumably to beat Porsche Taycan]() **More beef:** *[Elon Musk Ridicules Porsche for Calling Its Electric Car “Turbo”]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()