Too bad the tesla is a soulless, glorified golf cart that nobody wants except for some hipsters and moonbats. Also there is no way in hell a Tesla is getting 620mi range booting it around like that constantly.

Not to mention there's a pretty good chance that they will cease to exist 5 years from now, given Musk's rapidly diminishing sanity. Their new chief accountant or whoever just dumped his post after only being there a month. Probably because he doesn't want to get indicted.

-Mike

 

It won't be lithium batteries. Those things will go up quicker than a grenade if they get hit. Just watch what happens when a Prius or Volt has a wreck and the coolant for the batteries is lost.

 

It's not about Tesla or Elon Musk, or any one particular brand. Tesla could go out of business tomorrow, but the future of electric vehicles is proving itself and will go forward.

 

Haven't you seen talk of a dedicated lane to re-charge all electric vehicles' batteries on-the-fly as you drive?

 

Not with batteries it's not. Or at least not "batteries as a power source" as we know them. What tesla is making now is basically stopgap garbage. Tesla is the CFL bulb of automobile development. In order for electric anything to be viable you really need a fuel cell or
something. Something that can be replenished quickly that generates electricity onboard. Stacking a crapload of 18650 LION flashlight batteries in a matrix in a car (what tesla basically does now) is basically rolling lunacy.

Also unless gas is like 10 bucks a gallon or something, nobody is going to care about electric cars, outside of moonbats, hipsters, or people running self driving car services/uber/etc. Even a Prius makes more sense than the current iteration of this crap does. At least with a Prius I can refuel it anywhere and keep going.

-Mike

 

In most states the governrment can't even make the trains run on time or keep potholes filled, what makes you think they're going to be able to manage something like that... LOL

 

Mike -

I think you'll reflect back on your beliefs in the future to see that you were as wrong as the:

• People that said the automobile would never replace horses and mules.
• People that said wiring across the United States for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone invention was absolute lunacy.
• People that said there was no way that it would be commonplace for people to have a personal computer in their house.
• People that said it was foolish to think that practically everyone would have a portable cell phone and be able to use it like **** Tracy's wristwatch phone or Get Smart's shoe phone.
• People that said it was insanity to install enough cell towers across the U.S. for wireless cell phones.
• People that thought it was stupid to think fast food like McDonald's hamburgers would become popular.
• People that said DNA would never be used to prosecute someone for a criminal act.
• People that said Kodak film for cameras will always be used.
• People that thought 33 rpm, 45 rpm & 78 rpm records, 8-tracks, floppy discs, VHS/VCRs, Betamax, compact cassettes, etc. will never become obsolete.
• People that said phone booths will always be needed.
• And the list goes on and on and on...

 

Mike - I see that you are a pessimist. But, that's okay - the world needs all kinds...

 

At some point the price of gas vs the price of electric vehicles will make fiscal sense. Range isn't an issue for probably 90% of people who drive less than 100 miles a day. Truth be told, I would buy an electric vehicle if it the price is right for my driving style.

 

So where are our flying cars? We've been promised flying cars since the 60s and nobody has come close to date. Jet packs too, where a thing we'd be using by now. History is littered with what should have been and what might have been.

Personally, I want a Star Trek-ish transporter to replace travel. Breakfast in a Paris French cafe, dinner in a Sicily Italian restaurant and a weekend in Tahiti.

Electric cars will remain a niche product until there is a quantum leap in energy storage that can trounce gasoline or diesel. Electric cars are evolutionarily the equivalent of the model T, in their infancy.

Elon Musk is doing it backwards. If you want mass adoption of something, you make it inexpensive and appealing to the masses, not a niche product that has an exorbitant price and limited market. See model T above.

 

That's true for the vast majority of people. I probably average driving less than 30 miles a day, and I rarely drive more than 120 miles in one day.

 

Elon Musk isn't doing it backwards. If you look at the history of inventions that we now call common day items, things are always expensive early on. Computers were thousands of dollars, Plasma TVs were over $20K early on, cell phones were $1K+ devices, flying was for the super super rich, refrigerators were only for the wealthy, air conditioning? Forget about it,... Now everything I mention can be had for dirt cheap and are common items. You need the early adopters to pay the price to be on the bleeding edge. Then it becomes cheap and comes down to the common man.

Remember when only luxury cars had ABS and traction control? GPS navigation?

 

I would argue that adoption was hindered by the high costs. The model T was ubiquitous due to the low cost of ownership. Not many companies have been around as long as Ford and I'm not a Ford man by any means. Only Buicks have been made longer than any other car to date.

 

Plasma TVs were hindered by high costs as well. Many people stuck to their tube TVs as $20K to $100K was a bit hindering on the common man. Hell even LED TVs were hindering the common man when they first came out. And now we have 55" flat screen TVs for a few hundred bucks. Someone has to be an early adopter.

Your model T example is more an exception than a rule and would never fly in this day and age. It was a simple machine that could be cheaply made thanks to Ford's revolutionary assembly line process. But that is another topic for another day. Name one thing that is the equivalent of the model T in this day and age?

 

Did Lexus have it backwards also? Back in the early 90s, when the LS400 first came out it was starting at $39K, adjusted for inflation that was like $80K in today dollars.