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for free
at Tesla’s stations lining highways across the United States and
later around the world.
For both engineers and green-minded people, the Model S presented a model of efficiency.
Traditional cars and hybrids have anywhere from hundreds to thousands of moving parts. The engine must
perform constant, controlled explosions with pistons, crankshafts, oil filters, alternators, fans,
distributors, valves, coils, and cylinders among the many pieces of machinery needed for the work. The
oomph produced by the engine must then be passed through clutches, gears, and driveshafts to make the
wheels turn, and then exhaust systems have to deal with the waste. Cars end up being about 10–20 percent
efficient at turning the input of gasoline into the output of propulsion. Most of the energy (about 70
percent) is lost as heat in the engine, while the rest is lost through wind resistance, braking, and other
mechanical functions. The Model S, by contrast, has about a dozen moving parts, with the battery pack
sending energy instantly to a watermelon-sized motor that turns the wheels. The Model S ends up being
about 60 percent efficient, losing most of the rest of its energy to heat. The sedan gets the equivalent of
about 100 miles per gallon.
*
Yet another distinguishing characteristic of the Model S was the experience of buying and owning the
car. You didn’t go to a dealership and haggle with a pushy salesman. Tesla sold the Model S directly
through its own stores and website. Typically, the stores were placed in high-end malls or affluent
suburbs, not far from the Apple stores on which they were modeled. Customers would walk in and find a
complete Model S in the middle of the shop and often an exposed version of the car’s base near the back
of the store to show off the battery pack and motor. There were massive touch-screens where people
could calculate how much they might save on fuel costs by moving to an all-electric car, and where they
could configure the look and add-ons for their future Model S. Once the configuration process was done,
the customer could give the screen a big, forceful swipe and his Model S would theatrically appear on an
even bigger screen in the center of the store. If you wanted to sit in the display model, a salesman would
pull back a red velvet rope near the driver’s-side door and let you enter the car. The salespeople were not
compensated on commission and didn’t have to try to talk you into buying a suite of extras. Whether you
ultimately bought the car in the store or online, it was delivered in a concierge fashion. Tesla would bring
it to your home, office, or anywhere else you wanted it. The company also offered customers the option of
picking their cars up from the factory in Silicon Valley and treating their friends and family to a
complimentary tour of the facility. In the months that followed the delivery, there were no oil changes or
tune-ups to be dealt with because the Model S didn’t need them. It had done away with so much of the
mechanical dreck standard in an internal combustion vehicle. However, if something did go wrong with
the car, Tesla would come pick it up and give the customer a loaner while it repaired the Model S.
The Model S also offered a way to fix issues in a manner that people had never before encountered
with a mass-produced car. Some of the early owners complained about glitches like the door handles not
popping out quite right or their windshield wipers operating at funky speeds. These were inexcusable
flaws for such a costly vehicle, but Tesla typically moved with clever efficiency to address them. While
the owner slept, Tesla’s engineers tapped into the car via the Internet connection and downloaded
software updates. When the customer took the car out for a spin in the morning and found it working right,
he was left feeling as if magical elves had done the work. Tesla soon began showing off its software
skills for jobs other than making up for mistakes. It put out a smartphone app that let people turn on their
air-conditioning or heating from afar and to see where the car was parked on a map. Tesla also began
installing software updates that imbued the Model S with new features. Overnight, the Model S sometimes
got new traction controls for hilly and highway driving or could suddenly recharge much faster than
before or possess a new range of voice controls. Tesla had transformed the car into a gadget—a device
that actually got better after you bought it. As Craig Venter, one of the earliest Model S owners and the
famed scientist who first decoded man’s DNA, put it, “It changes everything about transportation. It’s a
computer on wheels.”
The first people to notice what Tesla had accomplished were the technophiles in Silicon Valley. The
region is filled with early adopters willing to buy the latest gizmos and suffer through their bugs.
Normally this habit applies to computing devices ranging from $100 to $2,000 in price. This time around,
the early adopters proved willing not only to spend $100,000 on a product that might not work but also to
trust their well-being to a start-up. Tesla needed this early boost of confidence and got it on a scale few
expected. In the first couple of months after the Model S went on sale, you might see one or two per day
on the streets of San Francisco and the surrounding cities. Then you started to see five to ten per day. Soon
enough, the Model S seemed to feel like the most common car in Palo Alto and Mountain View, the two
cities at the heart of Silicon Valley. The Model S emerged as the ultimate status symbol for wealthy
technophiles, allowing them to show off, get a new gadget, and claim to be helping the environment at the
same time. From Silicon Valley, the Model S phenomenon spread to Los Angeles, then all along the West
Coast and then to Washington, D.C., and New York (although to a lesser degree).
At first the more traditional automakers viewed the Model S as a gimmick and its surging sales as part
of a fad. These sentiments, however, soon gave way to something more akin to panic. In November 2012,
just a few months after it started shipping, the Model S was named
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