This
might happen, but I think Geoff is a little too breathless here. Smartphones cost up to $200 with contract. (Approximately nobody buys unlocked phones in the US.) Almost anybody could scrape up $200, and for those who can't, there are $0-with-contract smartphones by now and The Tesla Model S costs $69,900. That is a hilarious amount of money to spend on a car. That's $18,000 more than a Mercedes-Benz E-Class. $20,000 more than an Audi A6. $45,000 more than a Toyota Prius. $50,000 more than a Volkswagen Jetta. You could buy a different, damn good used car for every day of the work week for the cost of a single Tesla Model S.
OK, you say, but the iPhone launched at a high price too. The difference is, the iPhone's price came down in a couple of years and the Tesla's price is still extremely high, even for a luxury car, seven years after the launch of the Roadster. Is the price of a Tesla going to drop $50,000 in the next five to ten years?
Has the Tesla sold well? About 50,000 Teslas have been sold in the United States since 2012[1]. In contrast, Toyota sold over four times that number of cars in June 2015 alone.[2] "Struggling" Volkswagen sold 30,000 cars in April.[3] Even in the luxury category, BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus all sell in excess of 300,000 cars a year[4]. 300,000 cars a year, vs. 50,000 cars in three years.
The author also notes a number of advantages of the Tesla:
> It’s more fun to drive, with smooth, transmission-less acceleration. For most of us it is the fastest car we have ever owned.
> It’s quieter at all times and nearly silent at low speeds.
> It allows you to drive in the carpool lane
> It’s more roomy and has a trunk in the front (the “frunk”) AND a spacious back.
I agree with these.
> [It allows you] to sign up for a cheaper energy usage plan at home.
> It is always “full” every morning one drives it and you never need to go to a gas station.
This is true for people who live in detached houses. People who are ecologically conscious often prefer not to do this, and that makes it harder to gain a foothold among early adopters. In fact, among this segment, and among the younger segment overall, Tesla's biggest competition isn't going to be other car makers; it's going to be the decision not to own a car in the first place. Once Tesla reaches a point of economical mass production, they should seriously consider partnering with Zipcar to install charging stations at Zipcar lots and provide Teslas as Zipcar fleet vehicles; in the long run, they might get more Tesla drivers that way than they ever would selling vehicles to individual buyers.
If electric cars are the future, I'm going to despair that in the 21st century, we're still hauling around individual 300 pound Americans in 4,000 pound, 16 foot long cars. The trends towards young people returning to the city center and not owning cars are both better trends to encourage and more powerful trends than the trend of selling a really nice, $70,000 electric luxury car.
> It has a user interface - including, notably, its navigation system - as superior to that of other cars as the iPhone was to earlier phones.
> It is connected to the Internet.
> It continuously gets better with automatic updates and software improvements.
> It comes with an app that allows you to manage the car from
your phone.
None of these are inherent to electric cars, and any luxury marque should be able to copy these, just like they've been copying from each other for years. And once the luxury marques copy these features, they will filter down to all new cars. (This is even assuming that the last three points are a positive, which I don't think they are.)
> Gas stations will start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient.
On the contrary, I think not actually having to sell as much gas would be a boon to the gas station. Gas stations make next to zero margin on actual gasoline, and all of their margin on the convenience store. People on road trips will still have to take breaks, use the restroom, and buy a Red Bull. The gas station doesn't really care whether you refuel your car along the way, but as long as they still exist and provide the service of refueling the driver (and how hard is it to set up some sort of metered power jack for your electric car at the gas station, too?), the business of actually selling fuel will be subsidized.
In fact, here's another way to look at it: diesel-powered cars are fairly rare in the US, and yet it's still easy to find a gas station that pumps diesel. Not every gas station does it, but it's not a barrier to diesel fuel sales.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S#Global
[2] http://toyotanews.pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota+lexus...
[3] http://media.vw.com/release/976/
[4] http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/05/us-usa-autos-luxur...