Tesla:Unnecesarily quick with an extra of lost potential.
Here i talk about the tesla company, its first 3 models and lay my opinions as well review the last decisions of the company
Tesla Motors, maybe one of the first manufacturers that actually dared to do something with the idea of electric propulsion on a car.
Everything began back in 2006 when Elon Musk dropped a inversion on the first baby steps of the company, The objective of this was to demonstrate that the electric vehicle could compete with the best sportscar brands, and with the funds obtained from the sale of the first car the company would get, they would develop affordable vehicles for the everyday use.
This resulted on The Tesla roadster back in 2008, an electric sportscar built on the base of the Lotus Elise developing 240 horsepower with acceleration on the 3 second range and reaching the 6 ciphers on price,The Tesla roadster wasnt as insane as is it today,but as a first step it proved to be a great choice since the conventional Gas sportscar was getting boring for the Tech geeks living on Silicon Valley
with thousands of units sold for 3 years until it finished production on 2011 The Roadster proved to be a trendy car that occupied the front page of every car magazine since it was the first of its kind and ontop of that it was decently quick enough to compete with the current leading sportscars when it was about racing.
Tesla had begun a step on the automotive industry, the electric daily car had been made way back on the 80s,but until then nobody tought about making a proper sportscar powered by electricity and left its mark on history
This success at making a electric sportscar gave Tesla Motors a good mattress in which to make its next step, onto the daily car market as they would so since the early beginning, they had proven that electric cars weren`t slow or not agile at all,now they had to make something else that everyone could afford.
And then The Tesla Model S came onto the Automotive scene, with seating for 5 to 7 people the first model of the Model S began with a cipher of horsepower cars like the Subaru Impreza STI or the Evo 8 had back on 2007 but only with a slight 40hp difference along the drivetrain and tipe of propulsion of course...along a considerable weight difference.
The Tesla Model S however was something but affordable to the middle class, it had the base price of a Tesla Roadster reaching the 6 cipher mark, on that segment of price we could see Luxury cars of brands like Mercedes, Bmw, Audi…only people with deep pockets. could afford said car,Not even the Model S P75D with a price of 69.500$ was affordable for the middle classi
if we compared all 4 cars on a racetrack it’s obvious the Tesla would easily won in acceleration races , but…if we took a look deep inside on all 4 cars we could see a difference of price when it came to interiors and equipment. along a considerable difference when it comes to actual performance on tracks with turns.
The Tesla`s interior compared to its rivals was pretty blank and dry with the exception of a few air vents that belonged to the A/C along a buggy touch screen that if it ever broke it would render the whole car unusable while its rivals could easily shrug it off if the radio broke or the A/C controls didn’t work anymore,altough the temptation of a car with virtually zero maintenance was surely a good hook for potential consumers that didn’t want to get its wallet dry when they had to service their luxury sedan when something broke,the car on its era also took thousands of recalls over batteries,center display, faulty steering...the quality aspect is not the strong aspect of a startup company,but when you buy a "Luxury" sedan you want quality you paid for,in this case we didnt get it.
Did the Model S really deserve to be on the 6 cipher segment among the Luxury sedans only by the fact of having a fancy touch screen on the middle and being powered by electricity rivaling the acceleration of said Luxury Sedans? In my opinion the Tesla Model S wasn’t meant to be on the luxury sedan segment on its early beginnings only by its interior quality and design alone.
The Tesla model S on its early beginnings would have completely oblirated the mid range price sedans among the Lower price rivals including Mercedes and Audi, if it wasn’t by the excessively high goal they aimed at when they began, unnecesarily quick along wasted potential of a higher range for the basic version only being able to stay on the 200 kilometer range.
But…what happened later? The P90 came along the dual motor versions to the most savage version of the Tesla Model S, the P100D with the 6 cipher price tag, This time The Tesla Model S made a good step on the right direction to compete as a even quicker car against sports cars that could reach 60mph on the 2-3 second range like the Nissan GTR or the Black Series C63 Mercedes. But something didn’t change on this; the price of the model S became more expensive as the interior remained cheap and dull while the slower accelerating sports cars offered a slightly better finishes and designs along better build quality.
Tesla already proved to the automotive world that the Model S was insanely quick on an acceleration race, that the charging times had considerably decreased until being only a 30 minute wait on the supercharger by the highway,that when it came to futuristic looks the Tesla easily beat all of its rivals, but did the Model S even proved itself the proper way against the cars it rivaled on price and acceleration? When would it prove it deserved to be among them?
This was never known; in YouTube when the Model S came out the feeds were full of the Model S involved on 1/4 mile races against gasoline sports cars, without any video of it doing laps around a track,nobody tought about making the tesla face its rivals on a track so far.
In the comments section of every video the comments of admiration for the Tesla for winning the race with astonishing ease filled the feed until this question came to the heads of many petrol heads as it came to mine as I cringed at the comments
¿was it a really fast car? ¿or it just happened to be a very quick car?
The worst fears for Tesla fans were confirmed when an amateur driver got into the Nurburgring circuit with Tesla Model S P85D and lapped it; the results were devastating for the car scoring a time of 8:50 while the competition scored significantly better times along a better track endurance.
With the Model S humiliated at this lap time on the Green Hell the fans of Tesla only got the consolation price of bragging about their car needing less maintenance than the competition and being quicker than them along a more futuristic look..., but Tesla wouldn’t say its last word here. And instead it decided to attack the Family car market with a new recipe rather than pursue the Performance sedan market.
Tesla Model X, as we know the Minivan market isn’t something of the past, it has been on the automotive world since the early beginnings, after the half good step of the Model S Tesla unveiled the Model X in 2012, designed to be a practical electric Minivan for the everyday use With the ability to hold 7 people comfortably within it The Tesla model X made a jump onto the public`s view
Featuring a base Horsepower of 332 electric horses and acceleration on the 3 second range it became the fastest accelerating minivan on the world rivaling with supercars as the Nissan GT-R or the Lamborghini Aventador with 700 furious gasoline horses.
Without no doubt The model X became something else when it was about taking the kids to school, buying groceries or moving days when you had a lot of stuff to move and you couldn’t rent a truck, but the Model X was still a car not everyone could afford, its base price as the Model S sat on the 6 cipher mark along supercars and luxury sedans, the question here was…was Tesla Still loyal to its initial purpose of making a affordable electric car for everyone? Was it still up to the task of bringing the future to everyone equally?
The model X fatal flaw was one thing Tesla fans bragged about since the Tesla roadster, the acceleration; the car was unnecessarily quick for its original purpose of moving stuff and bringing kids back and forth from school.
Elon Musk wanted to prove that electric cars didn’t necessarily had to be slow and heavy or ugly, but this proved to be a fatal flaw, as the model X had the potential to become an electric minivan everyone could afford resulting on a major amount of sales along a better image for the general public, as i said before the car had too much of a quality it didn`t need to begin with,instead of solving problems as the Gullwing doors crushing kids fingers,or the rear trunk on the Model X with the 7 seater layout being smaller than the rear trunk of a Smart Roadster they rather focused on making it unnecesarily quicker than solving these design issues.
So far only 3 models S, X and the roadster had been put into production, but when the promises of Tesla of making an actual car everyone could afford would be accomplished? Well…they did get accomplished but…10 years later.
The current state of the tesla company in one picture
the reason I prefer to show the model 3 Crashed and bent up is not to say “Haha its sh*t” the reason behind this is mostly to portray the Tesla company as it is now after the release of said model 3, the Model 3 arrives 10 years late along the build quality of a 1990 Kia with a cost for the base model on the 30k dollar mark.
I can`t critiquize a company that was a startup 10 years ago, I can`t expect that Tesla makes 100% perfect cars on 10 years that literally got no flaws, even the car that got me hooked onto cars is full of flaws, among them a dash that rattles like crazy with a lot of unreliability if the engine is not cared for properly, but it rewards me with a noise that sends chills trough my skin
Returning to the point, Tesla has received more demand than it can satisfy, it is obvious that the advertising of the model S and model X as “the future” has been incredibly effective in attracting more consumers to new products of said brand, but the way Tesla is being handled currently is not the optimal one by many reasons, Tesla refused to sell trough dealers that weren`t theirs, this resulted in a lower sales opportunity resulting in lower benefits and publicity to a wider audience.
But…I don’t blame the company, Tesla Makes decent cars for this era, but to this day they are unnecessarily quick for their purpose of being cars destined to save the world and become the future, wouldn’t the customer prefer a better range along a faster charging time over a neck breaking acceleration and a lethargic acceleration after 60Mph?
Tesla needs a serious change after the model 3 in order to survive on the automotive world, no more fancy Ludicrous accelerating cars, no more ultra futuristic looking designs as the Apple company or a center display as in the movies...Tesla must go the way it was intended to since the early beginning…towards affordability for a bigger public, sacrifices on design and performance must be made, no buts.
I'm not an investor, I'm not a man in suit and tie who makes a lot of calls everywhere as a nutjob and bets his money in the stock market waiting for immediate profits to continue living in a mansion in Las Vegas, I'm an ordinary man like you a man that goes to work, pays his bills and on weekends likes to relax with friends and crack open some cold beers As we either go for a cruise on our cars or hang out at our homes
If I want a car I first have in mind the things I need, I need power, enough to be decently fast but not to get into trouble fast, I need range but not to get to the other side of the world,Tesla could perfectly make money selling electric car conversion kits, instead of focusing on ludricrous performance figures focused around 0-60 they could focus in improving build quality and actually focusing on accomplishing their goals.
so far tesla only delivered to us one thing,Quick acceleration times with a plus of cheap publicity in order to dont make us look at how it fails to deliver what it promised after the roadster, the model 3.
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Comments (5)
Very interesting 👍
Thanks,took me a while