Tesla seems to have figured out a way around the complaints that a lot of ICE purists have regarding electric vehicles… at least for the most part. We saw that with the Model S. It is a fantastic car in every sense of the word. It does everything well, and most of it comes as a result of clever thinking. Lack of sporty performance or range anxiety? Let’s fit it with a powerful motor and battery. The car is heavy? Let’s move all the weight to the bottom to lower the centre of gravity to aid handling, and let the instantaneous torque make it move like it was made of feathers. One of the safest, quickest, and most technologically advanced cars in the world, and we are not just talking about EVs. A masterstroke indeed. But… what next? The world does not run on just sedans, much less on electric sedans. Tesla’s answer to that is the Model X, an all-electric SUV that is a significant milestone on Tesla’s highway to conquering the universe. While universal conquest may sound a bit exaggerated, it may not be entirely wrong!

Tesla Model S had us spellbound with the kind of performance it shows up with right out of the gates, and being electric, right out of the gates, is not a term misplaced when talking about a Tesla. Model X… well, it is not less. The damned thing does 0-100 km/h in 2.7s while all other massive-engined sportscars exclaim, “Are we a joke to you?” Well, if any of them encountered a Model X at a stoplight GP, they will be. And we kid you not, the car is supposed to be utilitarian, and it looks the part. But the car is a bloody beast, and it… does not look the part.

We believe that Tesla plans to introduce these cute, seemingly harmless cars that hypnotise unsuspecting people who happen to drive one without seriousness… aka universal conquest. We think we should let that one go. The Model X is not that sinister unless you really, really want it to be.

When your car looks like the Tesla Model X does and does what the Tesla Model X does, you need to be dressed up. You don’t want to beat the best of sports cars when it comes to acceleration in an electric SUV and look like you don’t mean it. Lay down the hurt on the other car with the Model X, and other drivers with Rare Rabbit.

The look of the car is understated and subtle. The one we drove was blue, but we also saw one in white and it… it looks to incite the same feeling as when we looked at Sunny from iRobot. The plain front houses the sharp LED headlamps with the jazzy DRLs. and that is it… or is it? The Tesla Model X has some neat party tricks up its sleeves. Firstly, the windshield is panoramic. No, the roof is not panoramic… the whole windshield is panoramic. And while you should not utilise it while driving, sitting in the passenger seat ensures that you just cannot stop looking up, even after you start hearing strange crunching noises from your neck at the slightest movement. It is beautiful.

The second trick resides in… the doors. The Tesla Model X gets gullwing…oops… Falcon doors. It is a sight for sore eyes. We had an idea to make it a sight for all of our readers as we took it to the desert, opened the doors fully, and with the Dubai sun setting in the background, it makes for a majestic sight. The same can be said about the emotions evoked in you when you gaze at the setting through the panoramic windshield. While the car itself may not be astonishingly beautiful, with some out-of-the-box thinking, it does make everything around you seem more beautiful. The rear is not very different from the Model S but is more SUV-ish and houses a… spoiler! We’d like to inform Tesla that this makes the Model S very unhappy.

Predictably, the Model X is a 5-seater. Unpredictably, one has the option to go for the 6-seater and even a 7-seater variant. And the car packs some serious boot space too. And the rear seats can be folded to make up even more room. The interiors of the car are very much like Model S. A gigantic 17” touchscreen claims most of the real estate on the dash. Almost every function in the car can be managed from the touchscreen alone.

There are very few buttons around it and on the steering wheel. But we are quite sure that the buttons are gonna last very long because, in addition to the touchscreen, there’s voice command too. So the utilitarian tag is very well justified on the inside too. Now, when you pay attention to little things, it is really appreciated. The touchscreen in both the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X is slightly tilted, which looks a bit odd in the beginning. But when you realise how convenient it makes it for the driver to use it, it makes a lot more sense. About the passenger? They are free to work a bit harder since they are not driving!

The ThinkPad P1 from Lenovo is petite in terms of looks. It packs an Intel Core i7 (8th Gen) that goes up to 4.10 GHz in Turbo Mode! Add to that 16 GB DDR4 RAM, 512 GB SSD, and Nvidia Quadro P1000! A whole lot of grunt for a laptop that weighs just 1.7 Kg. That is surely hard to beat!

Coming to the performance of the car. Like the Model S, the Model X also gets 2 variants: Performance and Long Range. And just like the Model S, we got the performance variant of the Model X as well. Both variants have two electric motors driving the front and rear wheels individually. While both the motors of the Long Range variant are rated at 259 bhp each, the Performance variant’s rear-wheel motor pushes around 503 bhp! Though the torque is not explicitly mentioned, it must be well over 900 Nm considering the specs of the Model S. These are scary numbers even when the weight of the car is in excess of 2.5 tons!

Coming to the driving part, this time around, we knew what we had in store, so we were ready… somewhat ready. Much like the Model S, this car is also seriously quick, and it is not hard to violate speed limits if one is not careful. It does the 0-100 km/h sprint in 2.7s, as we mentioned before. That is unreal for a car of this… class. It was digestible after we spent some time with the Model S, but no matter how much time you spend with the Model X, the savage acceleration is something that you will never get used to. Unsurprisingly, the Model X is the quickest SUV in the world, and it takes that title from some very, very respectable names.

Now, the performance of the Model X is undeniable, and god save the driver of that expensive car that pulls up beside you at a stoplight. The humiliation is going to be terrible… The Model X’s real prowess lies in how it justifies being an SUV despite that kind of performance. Let’s talk range. The Performance variant of the car will give you a range of around 450 km (Tesla’s estimate sits at 491 km). The Long Range variant boasts more than 500 km! Some interesting conversions state that the electric range of the Model X, if converted to a rough estimate of fuel efficiency, it’d be around 35 km/l! And that number is something that comes with a 2.5+ ton SUV that can rip a hole through the time-space continuum.

And there’s more yet. The Tesla Model X also gets an optional towbar. More than that, the car boasts a towing capacity of 2,300 kg. And even more than that, while towing a 1,000 kg trailer and running at 90 km/h, the car can still retain 70% of its range! There must be a reason behind the success and the numbers that the Model X has been able to pull for Tesla. And that is despite some initial problems with the car that may have bogged down the sales to some extent. That is a commendable achievement.

So, the Model X is a thunderous all-electric SUV that boasts of ballistic performance and tremendous utility. Fantastic as it may be, the car is not devoid of some snags. Like the headroom in the rear, or the falcon doors… Yes, the same falcon doors that make for beautiful pictures can be a bit of a bother, as they are a bit slow. They certainly need a Baby Driver treatment so that no one even dares to ask, “Was he slow?” For the most part, it is just a wonderful car and a sure shot step into the future.

Now, we had a Beemer to give the Tesla Model S company, a BMW S1000RR to be precise, the Model X was not alone either. We had the BMW i8 to give to the Model X company. We have driven the i8 quite a few times over the last few years. Hybrid electric and all-electric, falcon doors and scissor doors, BMW and Tesla, and both of them headed in the same direction… the future!