An overview of Tesla’s quirky nature.
To say that Tesla is an unorthodox company would be an understatement. Apart from taking the honors for making the electric car relevant, and busting nearly every myth about them, Tesla has caught the other big companies napping when it comes to electric powertrains. The advantage they have now in the electric car market is quite significant, and it would take a few years for other companies to catch up.
Converging tech & cars
Before Tesla started going bananas with their performance figures, they were very much known for their infotainment technology. Ahh yes, who can’t forget that 17-inch infotainment TV that took the centre stage in the otherwise plain interior. While other manufacturers have caught up in terms of responsiveness and smoothness, Tesla still does overall integration better. Tech like autopilot, summon, etc, plus a neat little app that tied everything together made owning a Tesla a tech nut’s dream more than a car enthusiast’s one.
This naturally means coverage not only from car journalists but also from tech journalists. That gives Tesla more coverage about their product than any other car company. A Tesla is more of a rolling Silicon Valley than a car at this point. Some love it, and the purists, not so much. But nevertheless, Tesla made smart use of the tech they had to integrate the electric car into people’s lifestyles. This culmination of bleeding-edge technology with cars has not only sparked the interest of one set of enthusiasts but two!
The unorthodox part
As said before, Tesla is an unorthodox company. For an organization, singlehandedly setting the EV race on fire, adding a whoopee cushion mode via a software update is certainly not, well, sophisticated. Just take their vocabulary for example, “Chill” acceleration mode, “No I want my mommy” for deactivating ludicrous mode are terminology one would not see in a Porsche or an Audi.
Improving 0-100 kmph records (even by 0.6s!), adding various easter eggs and an entire library of arcade games controlled by the steering wheel and pedals via OTA updates, make the ownership experience of a Tesla somewhat like owning a smartphone (only a lot more expensive).
Elon Musk – Tesla stocks’ roller coaster
All of what I mentioned before could only be possible because of Elon Musk. Some say he is a meme lord, others say he is the real-life Iron Man. But what we know is that he is Tesla’s biggest hero and enemy. His personality is very quirky, and one could only wonder how he has time for everything he does. Speaking in the Joe Rogan podcast he said that he couldn’t stand LA traffic so he went ahead and dug a pit in the company’s parking lot as a starter for the Boring Company. He really is quite crazy in all the right ways.
No one really asked or would have wanted to see the “Unbreakable” glass demo, but the awkward fail of that test was the main reason Tesla’s stocks tanked by 6% that day. But that attitude has made him the face of Tesla. His position at Tesla and the company’s current position in the market rings a bell to the dominant era of Steve Jobs and Apple. But nevertheless, his Twitter account and his proceedings is a volatile factor for Tesla’s stocks, which are both a good and a bad thing.
The Cybertruck
Coming to the ‘car’ part of this article. The Cybertruck, the polygon with wheels. I have grown to like the design of the Cybertruck and am also aware that half of the people don’t (including people at MotorBeam). However, what matters is that Tesla with this ruler-only design has created a lot of hype and attention around this truck. A conventional-looking pickup truck would certainly not have created these many memes. I have not seen any car launch cause this much hype and gossip around it for a long time.
But this fantasy becomes a reality due to the staggering numbers the truck boasts. By now you would have seen the numbers, so I’m not going to bore you with them, but the crux is that Tesla has a lot of homework to do to make this a reality. An 804 kms range for something as humongous as that Cybertruck is downright insane. The Model-X, the current big boy of the Tesla lineup looks like a dwarf in front of the Cybertruck.
With three motors, a mega battery, and stainless steel construction, this truck can weigh as much as a small building! So 0-100 kmph in 2.9 seconds with all that weight could only mean Tesla has found something more with their motors. For reference, the Model-X does 0-100 kmph in 2.7 seconds but has a range of only 490 kms and weighs 2267 kgs.
This prototype design makes more sense when you consider the market it sees itself in. The pickup truck market in the US is one of the markets where the product does NOT do the talking, the badge does. If Tesla manages to add windshield wipers, door mirrors, and other regulatory elements and still make it look like what it looked on the stage that day, they would have success in their hands. As people have more than 2 years to get used to the design of the truck. And once they do, the design and the size is truly unique, but the response until now is not really great.
Yes, the quoted number ‘2,50,000+ bookings’ sounds huge, but you have to note here that that number comes from the 100 dollar refundable deposits. Plus Elon Musk, on his Twitter, said that the 1,46,000 of those bookings came on launch day. That’s a lot of impulse buys, considering that ‘ordering’ is just depositing 100 dollars, which is refundable. Unlike the other models, they have launched until now, Tesla has to prove themselves with the production guise version. Or otherwise, they will be returning a lot of 100 dollars.
Conclusion
While Tesla is at times immature and informal proceedings infuriate the men suits at Wall Street. As consumers and fans of features, what Tesla is doing is out of the box. Electric powertrains are the future, and Tesla sees themselves in the lead, for now. How they manage that or extend would be interesting, especially when the big budgets of the German companies introduce themselves.
But Tesla has certainly learned using the internet as a power tool. I personally think that is their biggest advantage. I mean, just look at the Cybertruck coverage. As I said before, no car has gotten this much coverage from these many sources. Someone even made a CFD analysis on the Cybertruck to see how the Polygonic cellphone on wheels stacks up against thin air. Even us at MotorBeam have covered this vehicle 3 times. That kind of online response is the company’s trump card and its marketing upper hand. With the federal tax credit about to be revoked, and other companies catching up, Tesla has to play their cards right.