News about Tesla has been more bad than good lately, but today I’m here to talk about something other than car crashes and Autopilot. Today, I’m here to talk about batteries and what could be coming for the Model S and Model X. It wasn’t that long ago that Tesla almost silently discontinued its 85-kWh battery, taking at versions of the 85-kWh Model S off the market. Very quickly rumors began to surface about a new, more powerful battery, and one hacker even found a “P100D” hidden within the source code for his Model S after an OTA update.

Tesla has remained largely silent on the subject. But, a Dutch forum, Kenteken, did some investigating and found something very interesting. Over in Europe, manufacturers can choose which company approves their vehicles to be sold and used on the road. Tesla uses a company known as RDW, which happens to have a part of its collective database published as “open data.” Kenteken decided to do some searching of this open database and discovered that there are, in fact, references to approval for a “100D” and a “100x.” It also discovered that there was a range of 613 KM (about 380 miles) associated with the model variant “100D.”

Here at TopSpeed, we took the time to do some searching of CARB’s database and couldn’t find anything related to a 100-kWh battery or any reference to a P100D or 100X. Then again, Tesla is still silent on the matter too, but with this new battery pack already being approved for European sales and use, it’s only a matter of time before Musk spills the beans and we start getting official word on the matter.

Keep reading for the rest of the story

Why it Matters

Now that Tesla has killed off the 85-kWh battery this is actually pretty big news. Currently, the best range the Model S has is 294 miles for the 90D and 270 miles for the P90D. So, a range of 380 miles would be a huge improvement for both models. As far as that goes, however, don’t expect to see an EPA rating that high from the EPA should Tesla release this battery onto the market. The range given in RDW’s database is based on the new European cycle, which is much more lenient than the EPA’s rating system. That said, we can probably expect to see a range of about 350 to 360 for the 90D and somewhere about 330 or 340 for the P90D. Either way, that’s still a new record for Tesla, and nobody can argue with that. Now it’s just a question of when Tesla will break the official news. Stay tuned for updates in the future on this one.