Tesla Motors' shares at two-month low as all-wheel drive, Model-S unveiled

Shares of Tesla Motors Inc fell to their lowest in over two months following the unveiling last night of an all-wheel drive Model S and driver-assisting tools, Bloomberg reported.

Chief executive officer Elon Musk had tweeted about the event on 1 October. The latest Tesla electric car's debut went ''largely as expected,'' and that could potentially ''take some wind out of the sails'' of the more bullish investors, Bank of America wrote. It said, the updates partly showed that  Tesla was playing ''catch-up'' with its competitors.

The shares were down 7.8 per cent to $236.91 at the close in New York, the lowest price since 1 August. The company had risen over 57 per cent this year.

Tesla's Model S electric car would be on offer with all-wheel drive capability as also safety features including driver-assisting tools intended to prevent crashes, such as lane-keep assist and cruise control that adjusted to the speed of traffic.

According to a note from Ben Kallo of Robert W Baird, those updates might not have lived up to the ''massive'' speculation ahead of the unveiling.

According to Musk, the dual-motors accelerated the new Model S from zero to 60 miles (97 kilometers) per hour in 3.2 seconds, while the all-wheel drive design aligned Tesla against luxury brands including BMW, Daimler, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota's Lexus.

Meanwhile, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk's big announcement regarding the ''D'' had as expected, turned out to be a new dual-motor option for the Model S providing it with the extra traction of all-wheel drive, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

And the ''something else'' Musk also hinted at earlier was a semi-autonomous system dubbed an Autopilot which offered a few basic functions currently but was  upgradable - via software updates and would offer greater functionality in the future.

The dual-motor option essentially added a second electric motor to power the front wheels of the Model S and was being offered across the lineup, meaning a 60D, 85D and high-performance P85D.

The 60D and 85D feature identical motors front and rear to give a combined 376 horsepower output. The P85D's rear motor was rated at 470 hp and the front at 221 hp, which gave the car a combined output of 691 hp!

But what was really noteworthy was that the P85D was claimed to be capable of accelerating from 0-60 mph in just 3.2 seconds, which compared very well indeed with many supercars and outpaced virtually all sedans on the market-including perhaps the world's most powerful sedan, the 707-hp 2015 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat.

The dual-motor option also extended the driving range of the Model S by about 10 miles as against the current single-motor, rear-wheel-drive models, allowing the 60D to travel about 225 miles at an average 65 mph, the 85D about 295 miles and the P85D about 275 miles. This could be attributed to the efficiencies designed into the new system, according to Tesla.