Tesloop has been hitting the road to an absurd degree since it launched in 2015. Averaging approximately 17,000 miles per month on each car, it offers perhaps the best case study yet of what happens to a Tesla vehicles after a lot of driving.
The top 20 CleanTechnica stories of the past week include some that are still blazing hot. As usual, the stories that garnered the most attention were Tesla stories. Apparently, despite being nothing more than clever marketing, people love what this company does and says. This week’s CleanTechnica top 20:
In so many conversations about electric cars and the transition to electric transport, certain commenters throw around the claim that conventional automakers can jump on the electric bandwagon as soon as “the time is right.” As soon as consumers demand them, large automakers can turn on the EV production switch and go into full production. “It’s just about putting the pieces of the car together — assembling the various components of the cars — and no one does it better than [pick your favorite conventional auto company].” Furthermore, “Tesla doesn’t have any real technological advantage. It can’t do anything large automakers can’t do.”
Traditional stock market analysts have never known what to make of Tesla. As a recent article in the Harvard Business Review notes, forecasts for Tesla stock [NASDAQ: TSLA] continue to be all over the map — there are roughly the same number of buy, hold, and sell ratings out there. Could it be that the metrics analysts are using to assess a company’s business prospects are outdated?
Buyers can get up to $30,000 off the price of a Tesla Model S P100D or Model X P100D now through the end of September.
Not that long ago, only a few electric cars were on the market. Nowadays, there are a few dozen. We certainly have a few favorites here on CleanTechnica, but every plug-in car really has its own selling points. I’m sure I don’t have a comprehensive list of these in my head, and many of the points are definitely as subjective as opinions about music or movies, but below are many of my thoughts on why I’d recommend various plug-in models.
Tesla and SolarCity have been awarded a patent for a new process that uses heat to bond solar cells together to make a solar panel.
We’ve had the first Tesla Model S in our Tesla Shuttle fleet for 3 months now. We’ve put 17,000 kilometers (~10,500 miles) on it. One of several reasons the business idea originally made sense to us was that we’d have almost no operational costs for the car itself. Most of the charging stations in our home city are free and Tesla’s Superchargers are of course free (for vehicles up to a certain production date).
It has been said repeatedly — the auto company likely to be most hurt by the Tesla Model 3 is BMW. BMW is known for sporty. Tesla does sporty better. BMW is known for innovative. Tesla does innovative better. BMW is known for premium. Tesla does premium better.
The revolution that will soon transform the world’s transportation system centers around four parallel and mutually-reinforcing trends: electrification, autonomy, connectivity and new ownership models. Tesla almost single-handedly initiated the first three in production vehicles, and continues to dominate those fields.
