Tesla Model S shocked the industry, but the response is fading
The consumer electronics industry has undergone tremendous changes over the past two decades. AR/VR devices have come and gone and come again, smartphones have gone from filling our pockets to dominating our lives, and the tentacles of connected services now touch everything we touch.
For me, however, the most exciting things are the technological developments that move us. I mean that literally: Cars, scooters, e-bikes, and every other wild and wonderful form of transportation have grown wings or wheels over the past few decades.
A love for all of these things has always been at the core of who I am. Many moons ago, before I took on the role of editor-in-chief of the site, I worked as an automotive editor. In the late 2000s, that mostly meant thinking about what was going on in the world of Ford Sync, or writing about flying car concepts that are still very much rooted today.
A nice perk is being able to drive many of the early electric cars, although the results aren’t always great. In 2012, I tried and failed to fly from Portland to Seattle for the zero-emission Engadget Show. The poor Mitsubishi i-MiEV we borrowed wasn’t up to the task.
But then the Tesla Model S came along. At the time, I knew it was significant. Everyone in the industry knows how significant it is, but it’s only when we look back more than a decade later that we can truly appreciate how significant it was. Looking in the rearview mirror, we can also see that Tesla has made almost no progress since then, which is a shame.
Fremont preview
In the (long) build-up to the car’s eventual launch in late 2012, Tesla invited me to attend the grand reopening of its Fremont factory. The place was incredibly large and almost empty. Tesla officials proudly displayed the many giant presses used to stamp Model S parts.
Other Tesla employees are dutifully feeding sheets of metal into these presses, and the other ends of the sheets come out just as flat as they went in. The press is there, pressing, but the mold that forms the part is not. Like many of Tesla’s upcoming events, this one was somewhat lacking in substance.
Nonetheless, the time I spent chatting with Peter Rawlinson had a huge impact on me. Rawlinson, who previously worked at Lotus and Jaguar, was Tesla’s chief engineer. He and I talked for a long time about the advantages of low-slung battery packs and the torque behavior of electric motors. This is all standard stuff now, but at the time, it was a great learning opportunity for me. (You can enjoy some of his insights in a series of videos here.)
Early Tesla electric cars had two-speed transmissions. I asked Rawlinson if there was a third gear to handle reverse.
“No,” he said. “We just spin the motor backwards.”
It seems like a very simple concept now, but it caused a small explosion in my ears at that moment. I spent the rest of the day thinking about the myriad other unforeseen effects of the shift to electrification. Nothing else in the industry is as exciting as this.
my comment
I took a quick test drive of a Model S at the Fremont event and took a lap or two around the Tesla test track, but I’ll have to wait until early 2013 to get behind the wheel of a Model S and get my first proper hands-on experience with the Model S. ‘s review. The performance version, equipped with an 85kWh battery pack, has a list price of $101,600.
I picked it up in New York and drove back home to Albany, NY. Along the way, I got a preview of another unfortunate theme at Tesla: its uncomfortable relationship with the media.
Before I could get far, a warning light came on on the dashboard. I called Tesla PR to ask what to do.
“Oh, don’t worry, we’re watching you,” they said. “It doesn’t matter.”
I don’t feel good. I’ve been reviewing equipment for decades, and I always assumed there was some level of logging involved, but this seems a little ominous.
(This has gotten worse over the years. In a later review of the Model 3, I complained about the car’s terrible high beams on country roads. Tesla PR asked me when this would happen so they could engineers can pull up video footage from my car. Driving.)
The warning light went off and now I could see Big Brother in the back seat and I started enjoying the car again. Two years ago, we reviewed the Tesla Roadster and found that the Model S was something completely different. It’s calm, collected, not nearly as airy. I drove 165 miles home with 23% battery left on a 24 degree day in January.
That’s pretty bad by today’s standards, but keep in mind that the most common electric car at the time was the Nissan Leaf. In 2013, the Leaf’s EPA rating was 75 mpg. The Model S is on another level.
But it’s not perfect. I’m not a fan of many of the interior materials and design choices for 2013, and I’d be very disappointed to know that things really haven’t improved since then.
I also found the handling to be impressive, but my biggest complaint is the lack of advanced driver assistance systems. The Model S doesn’t even have adaptive cruise. Autopilot is still several years away, and the continued collapse of full autonomy is even further away.
But I still gave it a glowing review and it deserves it. I and many others were impressed. I’ve recently spoken with several buyers of these early sedans, and despite the many teething problems, most are completely enamored with their cars. (So many doorknobs are broken…)
It goes without saying, however, that many people I speak with no longer like the Tesla CEO as much as they did then. Between a racially charged workplace and ongoing anti-worker behavior, cheering for Tesla is a lot more complicated than it used to be. What a shame.
ever-changing landscape
The seismic force generated when the Model S fell still reverberates throughout the industry. You can feel them in almost every high-end electric car on the market today.
However, most EV innovation occurs in other EVs. If you look at what Peter Rawlinson did with the Lucid Air, a sedan that can travel more than 500 miles on a charge, it’s easy to imagine what would have happened if he hadn’t parted ways with Tesla. The on-road performance of the Porsche Taycan, the off-road capabilities of the Rivian R1T and the simple coolness of the Volvo EX30 are constantly raising the bar.
Tesla has been more successful than any other manufacturer in getting more electric cars into more lanes and more chargers into more places. Tesla made electric cars feasible and desirable. To do that you have to respect it. However, the company’s greatest achievements recently have been focused on cutting costs and minimizing complexity, often at the expense of quality and safety.
Look at the Model S today and you’re still looking at a car that was released in 2012. Sure, it’s faster and has longer range, but its platform and basic design are the same as the one I reviewed over a decade ago. When you think about the time wasted on vanity projects like the Model X and vanity projects like the new Roadster, it’s hard not to feel the sting of missed potential.
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from Tech Empire Solutions https://techempiresolutions.wordpress.com/2024/03/08/tesla-model-s-shocked-the-industry-but-the-response-is-fading/
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