A hacked Tesla has just set a milestone at a Canadian airport: reaching 348 km / h

the track of Trois-Rivieres airport de Québec, a huge and desolate three-kilometre stretch of asphalt, vibrated on Thursday morning with a roar that encouraged you to cover your ears. So far everything in order and nothing that can not be expected from a terminal where planes take off.

The surprising thing is that in this case the noise was not generated by an airplane, not a helicopter, not even an eVTOL or anything remotely like it. Its origin was a Tesla, a Model S Plaid that reached the exorbitant speed of 384 kilometers per hourthe largest that reaches —at least as far as is known— one of the cars leaving the Musk factory.

The question is: How was such a mark reached?

Well hacking the vehicle.

The recipe: brakes and special wheels… and hacking

The history recounted by Fred Lambert of Electrekwho was able to follow live and from the Canadian track itself the feat starring Guillaume André, CEO of Ingenext, a Quebec-based company that sells modules that help unlock certain limited features in Tesla software. Thanks to its resources and experience, the firm managed to circumvent the vetoes set by the S Plaid system itself and express your speed.

André’s goal was to push the limits and test the capabilities of the Tesla sedan.

What remember your own Electrekwhen Elon Musk’s multinational company first announced the Model S Plaid, it assured that it could reach 322 kilometers per hour. When it went on sale, however, drivers found that the vehicle, at most, allowed to travel “only” at 262 km / h, a mark that rose to 282 km / h months ago thanks to a new mode.

André’s test shows that the manufacturer was not wrong with his announcement. It’s more, a video recorded from inside of the Model S Plaid of the CEO of Ingenext shows how during the test the speedometer enters the “red zone”, warning, and reaches 216 mph (348 km/h).

To reach such a milestone, however, André’s team had to do more than just hack the car. The team added bigger brakes of Mountain Pass Performance and tires Michelin Super Sport higher performance. All with the aim of reinforcing the safety of the car and, most importantly, facilitating the complicated braking maneuver after exceeding 300 km/h.

During his test, André actually needed practically the entire length of the runway. The car had about two kilometers to reach its maximum speed and decelerate from that moment. Despite the special brakes available to him, he needed the space to brake.

Thursday’s was not in fact the first time that André had attempted the feat. I’ve done it beforebut their tests had been frustrated precisely because of the lack of space.

This time it could be. And as Lambert acknowledges, the sound of the Tesla moving at breakneck speed down the Canadian runway was, plain and simple, “crazy.”