To Be, or Not To Be: That is Tesla's Question for Me
(Inspired by a C-D Automotive section post regarding the "high price" of the Tesla S, at this writing. My first reaction: "high in relation to what, exactly?")
I assume, from a marketing adoption curve perspective, most Tesla owners are still "bleeding edge" or "early adopters." For reasons a bit abstruse to me, that sort of analysis isn't easy to find on the Internet...perhaps I'm not looking hard enough.
It's a tough market to be an early entrant, given all the other dominoes that need to fall for it to succeed (achieve break out). That someone will achieve breakout is inevitable, given the technology is finally almost caught up with the concept. It comes closer year over year, with each new model a big step forward. I assume it's damn near simple as: smaller, lighter, higher-capacity batteries = vehicle revolution, after a certain critical combination of factors is hit (including, but not limited to: battery production (capacity), standardization of charging stations, ubiquity of charging stations, time to charge, availability of spare parts, lower costs due to economy of scale).
With Tesla's weird fundamentals (business-wise), whether it's them (and Elon Musk's sheer force of will) or someone else is another question.
Seems to me there are many Teslas (subjectively), eastside Seattle. That is a biased sample, because of all the tech-heads, money, and early adopters around here. I'm tempted, too, on general principles but don't see it happening for a few years yet.
In the end, "Give me a charge that takes same time as a fuel fill up, at comparable cost, and a recharge at every pump station. Then, and only then, we may kiss my internal combustion engine car goodbye!" Make that charge cheap enough, 90% of United States petro usage disappears over only a ten year period or so. See the size of the stakes here?
Wild guess...no facts, merely supposition...we are 10-15 years away from the above. That will be a heckuva interesting period, as there will no longer be a compelling reason to choose IC over electric for 75-90% users in this country). Then we'll start to see IC phased out, as cars age and are replaced in due time with comparably-priced electric.
At the other end, I think fuel stations will be as uncommon as electric recharge stations are today. Bet that's 20 years away, maybe 30.
I remember having a conversation with a woman in 1999 that it was soon time to kiss "books" goodbye, in paper format. She thought I was nuts. To me, smack in the middle of the tech at the time it was patently obvious that Barnes and Noble, Borders, other 19th Century technologies were rapidly becoming obsolete. And so it has come to pass.
Does it not follow that automobiles are nearly at that stage? There existed very few, if-any, portable book readers in 1999 that were as convenient, accessible, and interconnected as iPad, Kindle, or others today.
We shall see.
I assume, from a marketing adoption curve perspective, most Tesla owners are still "bleeding edge" or "early adopters." For reasons a bit abstruse to me, that sort of analysis isn't easy to find on the Internet...perhaps I'm not looking hard enough.
It's a tough market to be an early entrant, given all the other dominoes that need to fall for it to succeed (achieve break out). That someone will achieve breakout is inevitable, given the technology is finally almost caught up with the concept. It comes closer year over year, with each new model a big step forward. I assume it's damn near simple as: smaller, lighter, higher-capacity batteries = vehicle revolution, after a certain critical combination of factors is hit (including, but not limited to: battery production (capacity), standardization of charging stations, ubiquity of charging stations, time to charge, availability of spare parts, lower costs due to economy of scale).
With Tesla's weird fundamentals (business-wise), whether it's them (and Elon Musk's sheer force of will) or someone else is another question.
Seems to me there are many Teslas (subjectively), eastside Seattle. That is a biased sample, because of all the tech-heads, money, and early adopters around here. I'm tempted, too, on general principles but don't see it happening for a few years yet.
In the end, "Give me a charge that takes same time as a fuel fill up, at comparable cost, and a recharge at every pump station. Then, and only then, we may kiss my internal combustion engine car goodbye!" Make that charge cheap enough, 90% of United States petro usage disappears over only a ten year period or so. See the size of the stakes here?
Wild guess...no facts, merely supposition...we are 10-15 years away from the above. That will be a heckuva interesting period, as there will no longer be a compelling reason to choose IC over electric for 75-90% users in this country). Then we'll start to see IC phased out, as cars age and are replaced in due time with comparably-priced electric.
At the other end, I think fuel stations will be as uncommon as electric recharge stations are today. Bet that's 20 years away, maybe 30.
I remember having a conversation with a woman in 1999 that it was soon time to kiss "books" goodbye, in paper format. She thought I was nuts. To me, smack in the middle of the tech at the time it was patently obvious that Barnes and Noble, Borders, other 19th Century technologies were rapidly becoming obsolete. And so it has come to pass.
Does it not follow that automobiles are nearly at that stage? There existed very few, if-any, portable book readers in 1999 that were as convenient, accessible, and interconnected as iPad, Kindle, or others today.
We shall see.
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