Over the past few months, there have been a number of indications hinting at Tesla’s plans to introduce a 100 kWh battery pack option. Most notably, hacker Jason Hughes this past March was poking around in Tesla’s firmware and stumbled across some code suggesting that Tesla was working on a Model S P100D.
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In fact, Hughes even tweeted a cryptic message to Tesla CEO Elon Musk that read in part, “I know your secret.”
@elonmusk @teslamotors #tesla I know your secret. SHA256 of best part: 5fc38436ec295b0049f186651ebba5fd55e8d7b81eb61cbd00d3f1bf18dd9c81
— Jason Hughes (@wk057) March 4, 2016
It was later revealed that the SHA-256 message read P100D.
One month later, Tesla’s official Facebook page put up a picture of a Model S underneath a 💯 emoji, leading some to speculate that Tesla was slyly revealing its future plans.
Tesla of course denied such claims and instead said: “Remember, Model S is also 💯 electric, scored 💯 from Consumer Reports and so on.”
A 100 kWh battery option would be a huge development as it would pave the way for Tesla vehicles to travel even farther on a single charge.
Flash forward to today and it appears that Hughes was, dare we say, 100% on to something.
Originally reported by Kenteken.TV, a 100 kWh battery pack option for the both Model S and the Model X have been approved by European regulators for road-use.
And while we should point out that nothing is quite yet official, the listed range of Tesla’s rumored Model S P100D is a jaw-dropping 380 miles. So much for range anxiety.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Tesla over the past few years, it’s that the company is never content to rest on its laurels and is always trying to improve performance across its fleet of vehicles. That being the case, it’ll be interesting to see what type of surprises and updates Tesla has in store for us over the next few months. Specifically, it remains to be seen if Tesla’s EV for the masses — the Model 3 — will be available with a 100 KwH battery pack option.
