Recently, Motor Trend named the Tesla Model S, the “Ultimate Car of the Year”. To celebrate this prestigious honor, Editor-in-Chief Edward Loh sat down with Tesla, Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk to discuss what is being called, “the most significant car of the last 70 years.”
Known colloquially by its tagline “The Magazine for the Motoring World”, Motor Trend has a long history which extends back to its first issue, published in 1949. In that year, the Cadillac Coupe DeVille was named the first ever “Car of the Year”.
Motor Trend continues to one of Tesla, Inc.’s most dedicated and loyal supporters. The Tesla Model S, originally released in 2012, for a 2013 model year, was originally named the brand’s 2013 Car of the Year, as well as the top choice for the decade of the 2010’s.
The Humble Origins of a True American Original
Franz von Holzhausen (FVH), Head of Design and Elon Musk (EM), CEO of Tesla, Inc. along with a tremendously large cast of supporting players were instrumental in the creation of the genre defining, world changing Tesla Model S.
When considering the conditions which led to the release of their flagship, long-range, fully-electric sedan, they describe more humble and simple conditions than they are now more likely to be associated with.
FVH: “Yeah, we started planning it in 2008 and just revealed it March of 2009. So early 2009 and actually, right behind that wall, right in this room is …”
EM: “Yeah, that corner of the rocket factory, that big building, that’s the main SpaceX production facility, and the Falcon rockets are made right behind that wall. And we didn’t have a design studio or anything, so we just made one in a tent in that corner of the factory right there.”
Rather than being designed in some opulent metropolitan design center, the Tesla Model seems to have been born at the Hawthorne, California based research center for SpaceX. Elon Musk founded his aerospace and space transportation startup in 2002 with the express purpose of driving the innovation necessary to eventually colonize Mars.
It seems along the way, the wizards of Tesla, Inc. managed to completely disrupt and transform all earthly modes of transportation as well. The Tesla Model S, with its range-topping electric drive train, revolutionary performance metrics, and best ever safety standards has redefined what a modern car can and should be.
Agonizing Over the Details
Anyone who has spent any great amount of time laboring over a project of passion knows the feeling when progress stalls and the way forward feels far from assured.
It seems that according to the Motor Trend interview between Edward Loh, Franz von Holzhausen, and Elon Musk, there were understandably more than a few such moments during the incubation period for the Model S.
EL: Any particular feature you look at and you’re like, “Man, I remember how we really sweated over the … “?
FvH: Door handles.
EM: Door handles for sure, the nose, every curve, every crease, angle—we went over every tiny piece all the time. And it’s a hard thing to make a sedan look good. To make a sports car look good is relatively easy. It’s sort of like a runway model. The proportions are all … they’re set up to look good. But sedan proportions are not set up to look good. Most sedans don’t look good.
While getting the exterior aesthetics just right no doubt led to many long, sleepless nights with copious amounts of soul searching, configuring the interior functionality appears to have been no walk in the park either.
FvH: And the overall challenge was to make sure we could fit seven people in this car. When you think about a sedan that fits seven people, it fits like oil on water. It doesn’t really mix.
EM: I was just trying to get my kids in the car. So I was like … we needed to have a rear facing … two seats to the rear so I could get my kids in the car. But also be like, who has a sedan that can seat seven and that has a trunk in the front? So to be able to seat seven people and still carry luggage is crazy. So we wanted a car that had just crazy specs, that sounded impossible, and a lot of people said it was impossible.
I don’t know if you remember Dan Neil, who I actually have a lot of respect for—he wrote an article saying we’re all BS it’s not going to happen, the Model S is a fraud or whatever. He’s talked to everyone in the industry, and they’ve all said it’s impossible, so if we’re claiming it’s possible, that’s not true. And I called Dan and was like, “Dan, I’ll bet you it is.” So we had like a bet. And he said, “Fine, I’ll bet you you’re wrong.” “OK, I’ll bet I’m right.” And he was a good sportsman, paid up on the bet.
And in the end, the final result has turned out to be almost like the stroke of magic, or at the very least, the rational definition of true, measurable genius. The Tesla Model S, comfortably and reliably fits seven passengers.
The application of third-row seating in a sedan had not previously been accomplished. Nonetheless, rather than an after-thought or ill-conceived gesture, those Model S seats have been truly transformative, receiving high accolades from Consumer Reports as well as the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration. Each of these well known consumer rating agencies found the Model S to be among the most spacious and safe vehicles they had ever tested.
Tesla Model S: Performance Mastery Where it Counts
In the early days of Tesla, Inc., there were many naysayers who rigorously doubted that a production electric vehicle could ever match the power and fury of a car featuring an internal combustion engine (ICE).
All of that changed with the release of Tesla Model S.
In a heartbeat, the imagination of the world’s top performance orientated brands were swept away in a Tesla fever the automotive world has still not recovered from. The Tesla Effect is real and it is the epitome of disruption.
To date, the Tesla Model S is still the snappiest and most nimble production sedan that Motor Trend has ever tested in its long 70 year history.
When asked by Editor-in-Chief Edward Loh about why no other major automotive brand has been able to keep pace with Tesla, Inc.’s performance innovations, CEO Musk was extremely straightforward.
EM: Well I don’t know. It’s surprising to us. I thought the industry would have had cars that are competitive to the Model S well before now because as we were talking about—the Model S debuted in 2009, and even if people thought, “Well, that’s an impossible car to build,” which conventional wisdom said that the Model S was an impossible car to build, and there were many articles written to that effect. But once we started delivering them to customers and they were approved by the regulators and met all of the safety requirements, it’s like the Model S has got the best safety rating that NHTSA had ever tested of any car. I really expected that there would be within maybe three years or something, we’d have something that was better than the original Model S. But I guess the car industry is just fairly slow to evolve, and it didn’t take electric vehicles really seriously until 2015, maybe 2014 you could say.
Despite the amount of time, and tremendous distance that has had to be covered to allow for the rest of the main international automotive manufacturers to attempt to catch up to Tesla, Inc., the race is clearly on.
There is not a car maker in the world who is not rigorously researching and developing cars built off the electric drive train technology that Tesla has so boldly proven to the world with the Tesla Model S.
Charting a Course to the Future of Mobility
Despite achieving heights that no other car company has ever been able to reach, questions have lingered about the long term viability of Tesla, Inc. as a profitable and scalable enterprise.
This is in no way lost on principles such as Elon Musk and Franz von Holzhausen. Improving the economies of scale, securing vertical integration, and mastering the technologies at the core of the Tesla’s success remain key goals as the once upstart startup attempts to pivot towards maturity and longevity.
When asked about Tesla, Inc.’s future ambitions, Elon Musk was clear about his company’s motivation as well as the key components such as heart and soul it will take to get there.
EM: Well, I think we’ve got to scale up our production, get to making millions of cars per year. And keep improving the price of the car, offering a version of the car that cost less so that people can afford them while still having a car that people love and is great in every way. That’s sort of our challenge overall. But I feel like we’re on a good path to that. We’ve got a really exciting product lineup, just when we’re talking about Tesla specifically, and we can talk more about the future, but we’ve got the Tesla Semi, the new Roadster, later this year hopefully we’ll be unveiling the Tesla pickup truck, and Model Y will be going into production. I think in general, though, from a societal benefits standpoint, we need to just improve the cost of an electric power train—the battery pack and power train overall—to make the car more affordable, and we need self-autonomy. Those are the two things at a very high level that matter the most. But doing it along the way with heart and soul.
I think the autonomy is really going to transform automotive. … I mean since the major innovations in production that Henry Ford and others can up with, the next two massive disruptions for cars are electrification and autonomy, and electrification and autonomy are happening at the same time very basically. So the future will be all electric, all autonomous. I don’t mean some electric, some autonomous, I mean all electric, all autonomous. And in fact, I would really caution someone against buying a gasoline or diesel car or truck because it will have poor resale value in the future.
It will be like—I’ve made this comment before—but it will be like, let’s say it is 100 years ago, 1919, and a lot of people were still buying horses, and there was like this new radical thing called cars. Essentially you have this Model T or whatever, and people are like, “That’s weird automobile technology that will never catch on,” and they bought a horse, so that was a mistake. So trust me when I say the future is electric autonomy. So you want to buy a car that is electric, and you want to buy a car that is capable of autonomy, which a Tesla is. This will, I think, become very obvious within a few years.
FvH: I also think Model S proved that an electric vehicle can be beautiful and fun to drive and something you desire to own. And I think Tesla will do that with autonomy, as well. So it’s not going to be a scary, ugly, dystopian future. It’s going to be a fun, beautiful experience. And I think all of our products will have that. And this showed that’s possible.
The future for Tesla, Inc. is bright.
Source: Motor Trend