It is hard to overstate the significance of today’s Tesla Model 3 launch at the Fremont California factory. It very well could be the beachhead that electric cars need to tip the scales over gasoline cars in the US and the world.
Will we be witnessing history tonight? Let’s put it into perspective…
Tesla has over 400,000 reservations for the vehicle which haven’t been road tested by the public as of this writing, haven’t been in showrooms and really hasn’t been even seen in person by all but a few lucky folks. Keep in mind that at the beginning of this year there was only just over half a million EVs on US roads and just slightly more in all of Europe or China.
Tonight’s event will be the beginning of an order of magnitude change. If you want to compare Tesla to Apple, this is making a great electric car available to many more people akin to lowering the price of an iPhone from $600 to $200 (a drop by two thirds) and making it available to a much broader swath of the world.
Do people love their Teslas like Apple folks love their iPhones? Let’s have a look at Consumer Reports numbers (right) of Tesla people who would buy another vehicle from the company. Tesla is a whopping 15 percentage points above the field and the only maker that is even in the same ballpark is Porsche at a significant 7 points behind.
If the Model 3 is as great as us early believers think it will be, the car will fundamentally change how we move around. Gas stations, oil changing locations, transmission shops will start to disappear and be replaced by huge charging stations between major metropolitan areas. Oil infrastructure including tanker boats and trucks will disappear. Cities will become quieter. Air will become cleaner.
In their place, people will put solar on their rooftop to make free energy. The grid will need to be reinforced but it will grow stronger and more resilient.
The multi-trillion dollar fossil fuel industry will try to buy delays from the government and sway the public with misinformation but at the end of the day, the math simply doesn’t work out. Even if you don’t believe the science of climate change, EVs are better, faster, more fun cars and they move people around more cheaply than gasoline powered vehicles.
Read more: electrek