Tesla Model S vs Maserati Ghibli
What's the difference?

Tesla Model S

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2017 price

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Maserati Ghibli

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2021 price

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Maserati Quattroporte

Mazda 2

Mazda 6

Mercedes-AMG E63

Mercedes-Benz A-Class

Mercedes-Benz A35

Mercedes-Benz A45

Mercedes-Benz AMG GT

Mercedes-Benz C-Class

Mercedes-Benz C43

Mercedes-Benz C63

Mercedes-Benz CLA

Mercedes-Benz CLA-Class

Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class

Mercedes-Benz E-Class

Mercedes-Benz E53

Mercedes-Benz EQ-Class

Mercedes-Benz EQS

Mercedes-Benz S-Class

Summary

2017 Tesla Model S

2021 Maserati Ghibli

By Peter Anderson

By Stephen Corby

Safety Rating

Electric motor type

Multi-Motor – Mixed Types

S/C & T/C V8, 3.8L

Vehicle type

Battery Electric

Premium Unleaded Petrol

Electric range

613 km

12.3L/100km (combined)

Energy consumption

20.0 kWh/100km

Battery capacity

100.00 kWh

Seating

Likes

Rocketship speed
Clean interior design
Ever-improving proposition

Beautiful exterior design
Beautiful interior feel
Cinderella point in the range

Dislikes

Sadly, it's not a sports car
It's a lot of money
Lack of convenient charging

Seats lovely but a bit firm
Confused sense of identity
Expensive

2017 Tesla Model S Summary

If you have even a passing interest in the Tesla Model S, you'll have seen the endless internet videos where someone has lined up a Ferrari, Lamborghini, or another fast exotic car you could name, to race against it.

There's a long build-up, usually involving men who can't operate a baseball cap, a drag strip and idiotic words in the headline like "destroys" or "rips", or whatever. There's usually a bunch of honking bros with bad haircuts watching on, already planning their next viral video where they set a perfectly good mobile phone on fire.

It's facile and idiotic and doesn't give you any real clue as to the depth of whatever supercar it has "humiliated" or, just as importantly, the depth of the Model S and its spectacular engineering.

So, I won't be spending the next thousand words building up to the conclusion that the Model S P100D with Ludicrous Mode is up there with the world's fastest production cars from 0-100km/h, because I'll tell you now that it is, and it does it in a claimed 2.7 seconds.

Now that's out of the way, there's quite a bit more to the Model S than a "broken" Nissan GT-R owner weeping into their bento box.

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2021 Maserati Ghibli Summary

Maseratis make a certain amount of sense to a certain kind of person. As the folks who run the brand in Australia will tell you, its buyers are the kind of people who’ve driven German premium vehicles, but find themselves wanting something more.

They are older, wiser and, most importantly, richer.

While it’s easy to see the high-end lure of Maserati’s Italian sex appeal styling and luxuriously appointed interiors, they’ve always struck me as cruisers rather than bruisers.

Again, they’re for the older, more generously padded buyer, which makes the Trofeo range something of an oddity. Maserati says its Trofeo badge - seen here on its mid-sized sedan, the Ghibli, which sits below the vast Quattroporte limousine (and side on to the other car in the range, the SUV Levante) - is all about the "Art of Fast".

And it certainly is fast, with a whopping V8 driving the rear wheels. It’s also completely bonkers, a luxury car with the heart of a track-chomping monster.

Which is why Maserati chose to launch it at the Sydney Motorsport Park complex, where we could see just how quick and crazy it is.

The big question is, why? And perhaps who, because it’s hard to imagine who wants, or needs, a car with such severe schizophrenia.

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Deep dive comparison

2017 Tesla Model S 2021 Maserati Ghibli

Verdict

I spoke to a friend who bought a Model S before one had even hit the ground here in Australia. He chuckled when I told him how much this car cost but then said something I'd already suspected. "My mates who own a P100D would never drop that kind of money on a normal car. Buying a Tesla is like buying shares in the company, you're buying into the future."

And that's kind of the point. A $300,000 Audi RS7 (fully-loaded, obviously) is a bit slower in a straight line, looks just as good, is extremely well-built and emits noises that make people like me go as weak at the knees (just as the Model S' acceleration does). And would probably win a 10 lap race with the Tesla around Mount Panorama.

The Tesla is the future of cars. It may still be decades before the internal combustion engine is gone, but Tesla buyers are getting the jump, and today the Model S is the best car in which to make that leap.

Verdict

The Maserati Trofeo Ghibli is a very strange beast, but there's no doubt that it is a beast. Fast, loud and capable on a race track, and yet still closely resembling a classy, expensive Italian family sedan, it is genuinely unique. And genuinely strange, in a good way.

Tesla Model S vs Maserati Ghibli What's the difference?

Summary

Deep dive comparison

Verdict

Verdict

Tesla Model S vs Maserati Ghibli
What's the difference?