My grandfather was quite intrigued with those horseless carriages. Here he is, with a big grin on his face, testing out a Model T back in 1913.
A few years earlier, Henry Ford had debuted his Detroit assembly line and began cranking out Model Ts – the world’s first mass-produced automobile. The rest is history.
Then, a hundred years later in 2010, Nissan (OTCPK:NSANY) became the first company to mass-produce EVs (cars powered only by electricity), the Nissan Leaf. Motortrend at the time noted that the Leaf “could be the most significant vehicle of the century.”
Red Tesla Model S (Image: T. Larkum)
Did the 2010 Leaf and does today’s Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Model 3 indeed herald a transportation revolution into EVs, much as Henry Ford’s Model T did into “horseless carriages” a century earlier?
Well, EV sales have soared from practically nothing in 2010 to an estimated 1.6 million in 2018 and are up 68% over 2017.
The surge in EV sales (growing 50-100% each year now) is primarily due to better and more affordable batteries and today virtually every major automaker plans on introducing electric cars, if they haven’t already, both hybrids and EVs.
Tesla’s electric cars are known for being environmentally-friendly, and they just got a little more vegan-friendly. The automaker this week quietly upgraded all of its premium interior options to be completely leather-free.
While the company hasn’t made an official announcement, a Tesla spokesperson confirmed the change, saying that the company now only sells its premium seating option, which is a non-animal seating material designed specifically for Tesla.
Cars still come with leather steering wheels, but leather-free options are available upon request, according to a blog post from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
No official announcements have been made about the interior of the new Model 3, and the representative from Tesla could only confirm this transition for the Model S and Model X.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, however, appeared to confirm that vegan seating would be an option for the Model 3 on Twitter.
PETA, one of Tesla’s shareholders, applauded the move in a blog post Monday.
Tesla has always offered standard cloth seating which is a vegan option, but PETA began pressuring the automaker at a 2015 stockholder’s meeting to drop leather seats entirely by 2019.
Although Tesla stockholders voted against that proposition, the following year Tesla rolled out its first synthetic leather premium seating option in “Ultra White” for the Model X crossover SUV.
Anne Brainard, PETA’s Director of Corporate Affairs, noted that other luxury car companies like BMW and Mercedes-Benz have also begun offering faux-leather seating options.
Despite this, Brainard said dozens of major automakers are still supplied by cattle ranches that subject animals to horrific abuse, citing a 2016 PETA investigation.
“PETA will continue to urge all companies to follow Tesla’s lead in choosing sustainability and kindness over cruelty,”
Established carmakers may scoff at Elon Musk’s firm, but like Apple and the iPhone, it heralds a massive shake-up of the auto industry.
Tesla Model3 (Image: Wikimedia/Carlquinn)
Two interesting things happened last week. One was Tesla’s delivery of the first batch of its Model 3, the company’s first “affordable” car. (If you think $35,000, about £26,500 – is affordable, that is.) The second was a “diesel summit” held in Berlin, a meeting where the bosses of Germany’s leading car manufacturers (VW, BMW, Audi, Ford, Porsche and Daimler) got together with ministers to ponder the industrial implications of the emissions-cheating scandal and the decisions of the British and French governments to outlaw petrol cars and vans from 2040.
Although no one in the car industry will say so, diesel technology has been a dead duck since the emissions-cheating scandal erupted, followed by the revelations of how polluted London’s atmosphere has become, with emissions of nitrous fumes from diesels being blamed for much of the problem. And the fallout is already being seen in the sales figures. In January, for example, UK registrations of new diesel cars were 4.3% down on a year ago, while petrol car sales were up by 8.9%. If you’re a rural resident who doesn’t worry too much about the environment or resale value, then you can already grab real bargains in the diesel car market. And for the time being petrol heads can feel (relatively) cleaner than thou. But ultimately, the game is up for the internal combustion engine.
Deliveries of electric car maker’s more affordable saloon begin in USA, but right-hand-drive models are some way off
The first deliveries of Tesla’s more affordable electric saloon began on Friday, but UK advance orders won’t be fulfilled until 2019 at the earliest.
The electric car company’s much-anticipated “more affordable” Model 3 saloon has been pitched as the car that brings EV technology to the general public thanks to a $35,000 (£26,000) price tag.
However, following Friday’s launch event, it became clear that while it is possible to buy a Model 3 at that price, very few cars will ever hit the road in base spec.
In a likely nod to the Ford Model T, introduced in 1908 and widely regarded as the first affordable car, the only standard colour is black – silver, blue, white and red all cost $1,000 (£760) extra.
The standard car has a 220-mile battery, though a long-range version with a range of 310 miles is available starting at $44,000 (£33,500). The latter also offers faster acceleration and shorter recharging times.
Meanwhile, the premium upgrade package, which includes heated seating, upgraded interior materials and a premium audio system, costs $5,000 (£3,800).
Elon Musk’s new mass market-aimed electric car has no directly visible speedometer, comes in two battery versions and isn’t a bad option for a sleep.
Tesla Model 3 Unveil (Image: Tesla)
lon Musk revealed Tesla’s Model 3 is unlocked by a smartphone and doesn’t have a traditional key or fob among a host of other details at the delivery event for the first 30 mass-market electric cars over the weekend.
As the Model 3 enters what Musk called “six months of manufacturing hell” as Tesla ramps up production to meet the more than 500,000 pre-orders, one of the most surprising titbits is that there is no traditional key to open and start Tesla’s mass-market electric car hope.
Instead, would-be buyers of the $35,000-plus five-seat electric car will have to unlock the car with their smartphones over Bluetooth. The car will detect the owner’s smartphone – almost all modern smartphones made in the last three years supports Bluetooth – and automatically unlock, ready to start and go.
Should the battery on your phone run flat, which is a very real possibility in the days of increased use for everything from music, cameras and now keys, Tesla has a backup in the form of an NFC key card that is apparently thin enough to store in a wallet.
Press the card against the car’s B-pillar to unlock it and place it between the seats on a special spot to be able to start the car. It’s designed for valet use, but should be good to get into the car and at least charge your phone so you can properly unlock the Model 3 and go.
But the key-less design wasn’t the only thing we learned over the weekend …
1. Two battery versions
The minimalist interior of the Model 3. Photograph: Reuters
The Model 3 will come in two versions. The $35,000 base model has a battery with a 220-mile range, does 0-60mph in 5.6 seconds and has a top speed of 130mph. It can be “supercharged” to 130 miles of range in 30 minutes and charges at a rate of 30 miles per hour via a 240V, 32A home charger.
The range-extended version, which costs $44,000, will travel up to 310 miles per charge, reaches 60mph in 5.1 seconds and a top speed of 140mph. It will reach a charge of 170 miles in 30 minutes attached to a supercharger, and charges at a rate of 37 miles per hour with a 240V, 40A home charger.
The more expensive Model 3 with the longer range is currently being produced, with the cheaper version to be produced at a later date. A high-performance version of the Model 3 will also be available sometime in the middle of next year, according to Musk.
2. There are no instruments, just a 15in touchscreen in the middle
The 15in touchscreen is the only display in the cabin. Photograph: Reuters
There’s no speedometer, battery gauge or anything else directly in front of the driver. Instead there’s a large, 15in touchscreen in the middle of the dash, which displays a virtual instrument cluster along with mapping, entertainment and cabin controls.
The Model S has a 17in touchscreen in the middle of the dash, but it is in mounted in a portrait orientation compared to the Model 3’s landscape orientation.
The raucous crowd had dwindled to a few dozen hangers-on. The international reporters had returned to their hotels, and Tesla’s billionaire chief executive, Elon Musk, had disappeared into his sprawling Fremont, Calif., factory about an hour earlier.
Tesla’s Model 3 rollout was essentially over, but in a nearby parking lot where the first test rides of the electric car were being offered, the night’s enthusiasm had yet to wane.
In almost any other circumstances, a silent, three-minute ride around a poorly lit factory parking lot that barely cracked school-zone speed limits would’ve been a laughably underwhelming experience. But for many riders, myself included, this time was different.
One spin in the Model 3 just wasn’t enough. Journalists, factory workers and their family members, and random revelers on hand to celebrate returned to the back of the line over and over again as if the understated electric sedan were a futuristic carnival ride.
“That was fantastic,” one man said as he got out of the car. “Can we take pictures?”
“Can we do it again?”a woman asked.
It’s quite likely that the effusive reactions were at least partly influenced by Tesla’s sustained PR campaign. Company handlers had been force-feeding attendees a diet of Model 3 exuberance for several hours in the form of mesmerizing videos, splashy lights, upbeat dance tracks and free drinks – giving people the feel of having an exclusive backstage pass to the automotive future.
“This is the world’s first mass-market electric vehicle,” we were told. “You, my friend, are experiencing history!”
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.
With half a million orders for the $35,000, 350km-range vehicle, the upstart carmaker faces its biggest test
Tesla boss Elon Musk has handed over the first of what he hopes will be a mass-market electric car to employee buyers, setting the stage for the biggest test yet of the company’s plans to revolutionise the auto industry.
Tesla Model3 (Image: Wikimedia/Carlquinn)
Outside Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California on Friday night, Musk showed off the $35,000 Model 3 which has a range of 220 miles (350 km) on a charge that marks a departure from the company’s earlier luxury electric cars.
Hours before the event, Musk acknowledged it would be “quite a challenge” to build the car during the early days of production.
“We’re going to go through at least six months of manufacturing hell,”
Musk told journalists.
The over half a million reservations are up from about 373,000 disclosed in April 2016. Customers pay $1,000 refundable deposits for the car, which is eligible for tax credits. Any new buyers would likely not receive their car until the end of 2018, Musk said.
A longer-range version of the car is priced at $44,000 and will drive 310 miles (500 km) on a single charge. The cars feature a streamlined dashboard devoid of buttons or knobs, with a touchstream display to the right of the driver.
Tesla faces major hurdles living up to the Model 3 hype. The 500,000 vehicles Tesla vows to produce next year are nearly six times its 2016 production.
Were Tesla to produce, and sell 500,000 cars per year, the company would likely outsell the BMW, Mercedes, or Lexus brands in the United States.
Production delays and quality issues marred the launches of Tesla’s Model S and Model X vehicles, and the company blamed production problems for a shortfall during the second quarter of this year. Musk has said a simpler Model 3 design will greatly reduce potential assembly-line problems.
Tesla has burned through more than $2bn in cash so far this year ahead of the launch. A troubled Model 3 launch could heighten the risks for the company, while a steady delivery of Model 3s could generate a stream of cash that would allow Tesla to avoid going again to the capital markets to fund its operations.
It’s finally here: The Model 3, Tesla’s $35,000 electric gamechanger. A single black Model 3 rolled off the production line Friday with a serial number all its own, kicking off a company-defining six months. The car will belong to Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO and co-founder, who shared images of it on Twitter over the weekend.
Serial Number: 1. This one goes to Musk.
Tesla has already taken in roughly half a billion dollars in Model 3 deposits, at $1,000 apiece, and its proposed ramp-up schedule would have it rivaling well-established U.S. market peers like BMW and Mercedes by year’s end. The only thing standing between Tesla and being the world’s first mass-market electric carmaker is proving it can build, deliver, and service enormous numbers of these vehicles—without sacrificing quality.
The production acceleration will be slow at first. Tesla plans to hand over the keys to 30 cars at a launch celebration on July 28. It then envisions building 100 cars—less than three a day—for the month of August, according to a series of Twitter posts by Musk last week. September will bring another 1,500 cars, and the ramp will build to a rate of 20,000 cars a month by December, Musk said. It’s an aggressive schedule that will more than double Tesla’s total production rate in six months, and then quintuple it by the end of next year.
If Tesla achieves all of Musk’s targets, it will build more battery-powered cars next year than all of the world’s automakers combined in 2016. U.S. sales under Musk’s 2018 targets would significantly outpace the BMW 3 Series and the Mercedes C-Class, the best-selling small luxury cars in the country.
Tesla, by tradition, delivers the first new car off the line to the first customer to pay full price once the car officially goes on sale. Musk’s collection includes the first Tesla Roadster and the first Model X—but not the first Model S. That trophy belongs to Tesla board of directors member Steve Jurvetson, who told the Chicago Tribune in 2010 that he scored the first of Tesla’s flagship sedans by writing out a check just before a board meeting and tossing it across the table. The right to the first Model 3 was won by board member Ira Ehrenpreis, who then gifted it to Musk for his 46th birthday, on June 28.
Lower-cost electric car begins delivery with first model to company chief executive as first 30 customers to get vehicles at 28 July party.
Tesla Model 3
The first of Tesla’s highly anticipated lower-cost electric cars, the Model 3, has rolled off the production line to its new owner, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk.
The one-man marketing machine, who also took on a large, high-profile battery project in Australia and a runs a privateer space company Space X, shared a couple of photos of the Model 3.
The Model 3 is the third model in the current range from the company that includes the Model S and Model X – a crossover SUV that was delivered to customers almost 18 months later than planned.
Tesla’s limiting of options for the Model 3 to choice of colour and wheels was made in an effort to speed manufacturing and reduce the production issues it has suffered in the past with an over-complicated list of options for its Model X.
