by Chris Chilton
- Carwow pits the SU7 Ultra against the Model S Plaid in drag races and roll-on bouts.
- The newer Xiaomi has 1,527 hp and 1,306 lb-ft to the Tesla’s 1,006 hp and 1,047 lb-ft.
- To no-one’s surprise the SU7 wins, but the Plaid makes it work hard for that victory.
Xiaomi has already proved its SU7 mettle at the Nurburging, demolishing the fastest times set by its Porsche Taycan and Tesla Model S rivals. But what happens when you take those corners out of the equation? That’s what we find out in a new Carwow video pitting the the top-spec SU7, the Ultra, against a Model S Plaid.
Also: Xiaomi Boss Admits They Bought Teslas And Tore Them Down To Learn Every Secret
It’s no understatement to say things don’t look good for the Tesla going into this fight. We now live in a world so crazy that even the Plaid’s once outrageous four-figure power output seems kind of ordinary.
Its 1,006 hp (1,020 PS) and 1,047 lb-ft (1,420 Nm) stats are dwarfed by the SU7 Ultra’s 1,527 hp (1,548 PS) and 1,306 lb-ft (1,770 Nm), and though the Tesla fights back with a 375 lbs (170 kg) advantage you don’t need to reach for a calculator to know it’s on the backfoot.
Launch Control Drama
But when the flag drops it’s the Plaid that drops the SU7, again and again. Carwow host Matt Watson has spent more time on runways than most pilots and is obviously a dab hand at launching cars, both in terms of reacting to the flag and managing wheelspin – and the more powerful SU7 obviously has more wheelspin to manage. But it’s still a shock to see how long it take the Xiaomi to even begin to start reeling the Tesla in.
But once it gets going, it makes the Plaid look like it’d struggle to outrun a Dacia Spring. The in-car shot from the Tesla looking across Watson to the SU7 streaking by is mind blowing. However, the resulting quarter-mile times are pretty close.
That’s because the Xiaomi takes so long to hit its stride – 9.3 seconds for the SU7, 9.5 seconds for the Model S – and based on this evidence the Chinese car might not have the space to make up the ground in your average stoplight grudge match.
US-based Plaid owners don’t have to worry about finding out because Xiaomi doesn’t offer cars in America yet (though European sales are on the horizon). And that’s just as well for Tesla, because in China, the Ultra sells for the equivalent of $74,300, while the Plaid is almost $100k in the US.