Elon Musk: Tesla Model S ‘Plaid’ with new rear-facing seats coming Oct/Nov 2020

Tesla CEO Elon Musk added some details about the upcoming Tesla Model S “Plaid” wth “7 seats” coming in October/November 2020.

Earlier today, we reported that Tesla’s testing of new Model S vehicles, including a 3-motor “Plaid” Model S, continues at the Nürburgring racetrack, and a witness said that Tesla already crushed Porsche Taycan’s time.

Now Musk has commented on the achievement on Twitter:

It’s a start. We expect these track times to be beaten by the actual production 7 seat Model S Plaid variant that goes into production around Oct/Nov next year.

Tesla announced a Model S with a 3-motor “Plaid powertrain” and new a “chassis prototype,” and Musk also said that Tesla has a new 7-seater Model S prototype at the Nürburgring racetrack.

However, Musk confirmed that he is actually talking about bringing back Tesla’s previous “5+2” seat configuration with two rear-facing seats, albeit bigger:

No, original 5 forward facing seats plus 2 rear-facing smaller seats. The new rear seats will accommodate larger passengers than before.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 17, 2019

While he is talking about “larger passengers,” it’s unclear if he is talking about accommodating adults.

Electrek publisher Seth Weintraub had the original rear-facing seat option on his first Model S, and they become too small when the kids got closer to age 10:

In the first picture, the kids are 2 and 5 years old, and in the second picture, they are 9 and 6 years old.

Musk says that Tesla will bring back an upgraded version of the rear-facing seats late next year for the Model S at the same time as the new 3-electric motor “Plaid” powertrain.

Last week, we reported on the Tesla Model S prototypes at Nürburgring having new fascia, a strange rear spoiler, and more modifications.

It’s unclear at this point if all the modifications will make it to the production version, but the CEO seems to believe that the production version will actually beat these modified prototypes currently being tested on the Nürburgring racetrack.