Gratitude: Tesla Model S
Article by James Herne
When the Tesla Model S came out and I had the chance to test drive it, I caught myself thinking: it accelerates like a Porsche! Before the test drive, I had no idea how good the Model S really is.
But, let’s start from the beginning. Very beginning.
Nikola Tesla moved from Croatia to USA in 1884. In 1887, he built a new type electric motor, and Tesla Electric Company was founded.
Roughly a 100 years forward in time, in early 1980s, Martin Eberhard began his career as an engineer at a computer company founded by Bernard Tse.
In 1999, student Jeffrey Brian “JB” Straubel converted his Porsche 944 into electric, and wrote: “… still driving the car like a Porsche. And let’s not forget the standard EV benefits of being relatively quiet, emission-free, and rechargeable in the garage. Our house is now also purchasing 100% green energy from the Palo Alto Municipal Utility (for a 3 cent/kwh premium) so the car is truly a zero emission vehicle being recharged by some mix of wind, small hydro, and geothermal energy.”
Elon Musk earned his first millions in 1999 when he sold his stake in the web software company Zip2, which he had co-founded. After the sale, Musk co-founded the online payments company X.com in 1999. X.com merged with its competitor in 2000, and in 2001 the company was renamed to PayPal. Twenty-one years later, Musk would start using the X.com domain name again, but that’s another story. In 2002, eBay acquired PayPal, and Musk founded the space technology company SpaceX.
In 2003, Martin Eberhard founded a company called Tesla Motors together with Marc Tarpenning. Eberhard’s idea was to build cars with lithium-ion batteries. Li-ion batteries are 5 times lighter than lead-acid batteries with the same energy capacity, but lithium batteries were extremely expensive at the time. The battery price defined the price of the car. An expensive car has to be either a sports car or a luxury car.
Martin Eberhard, the CEO of Tesla Motors, invited his former employer Bernard Tse to become a board member at Tesla. Tse later founded a company called Atieva to design high-performance Li-ion batteries. What’s even more interesting: Atieva became Lucid Motors. But that’s another story.
In 2004, Elon Musk joined Tesla Motors as an investor and became the biggest shareholder. The company founder Martin Eberhard, a technology millionaire himself, probably didn’t invest as much money into Tesla as Musk did. If that’s the case, then Musk had more confidence in electric cars and therefore it is rightful to consider Musk a co-founder of Tesla. Especially because of what came out of Tesla later under Musk’s leadership.
JB Straubel, who had built an electric Porsche 5 years earlier, joined Tesla in 2004 as a Chief Technology Officer. He was an absolute fit because of his talent. And maybe also because he had earlier built an electric sports car.
The first Tesla was based on Lotus Elise sports car. The production of the Tesla Roadster started in 2008. For Tesla, the Roadster created the image of a sports car company, which was fantastic for marketing and to have people talk about the brand. Weighing 1235 kg / 2723 lbs, the Tesla Roadster was light compared to other sports cars with such a power and acceleration.
Elon Musk became the CEO of Tesla in year 2008. His idea was to bring electric cars to the masses.
Roadster production was discontinued in 2012. In total, over 2,000 cars were made. With a price tag of over 100,000 USD, the Roadster was quite expensive, and every first owner should be admired for taking the bold step to go electric. It helped get Tesla Motors off the ground.
Musk was Tesla’s product visionary, and JB Straubel made things happen: batteries, power electronics, and software.
On June 1, 2012, JB Straubel handed the first Model S to Tesla investor and board member Steve Jurvetson.
On receiving the Tesla Model S P85, Jurvetson said: “It’s stunningly beautiful, gorgeously engineered, represents the future. We’ll all look back in 20 years from now and realise this is the future. All cars will be electric, without any doubt in my mind.“
I wondered why the Tesla Model S looks like a Mazda, and it turns out that Tesla designer Franz von Holzhausen had previously worked for Mazda. For sports and luxury car buyers the exterior design of the Model S didn’t offer anything particularly special, but in the eyes of a finance professional it was perfect, because this design was acceptable to a very large group of buyers. Compared to the rather regular exterior, the interior looks very good – inner beauty first!
The absence of analog gauges set the Tesla Model S apart from other cars in 2012. I remember driving the first version of this American car and thinking that European premium cars were stuck in the past. Tesla’s digital displays and 17-inch touchscreen looked like the future. But they weren’t. They were reality. The touchscreen was immediately easy to use, and it made me admire Tesla’s software engineers.
After driving the Model S, I drove my old Porsche home, and it suddenly felt a hundred years old. I found myself thinking that an internal combustion engine, with its 1,000 parts, is not a very clever invention compared with an electric motor. It is not smart to solve such a simple task as moving forward in a complicated way. In fact, by 1900 (and this is not a typo!), Ferdinand Porsche had already created fully electric and hybrid vehicles, including an all-wheel-drive electric vehicle with a motor inside each wheel.
In 2012, two versions of the Model S were launched, the Model S 85 and P85. These cars had 85 kWh batteries and ‘P’ showed a ‘Performance’-version. In 2013, the Model S 60 was launched, which was the lightest Model S.
The all-wheel-drive versions 85D and P85D were launched in the end of 2014. All-wheel-drive versions had two motors and were therefore called Dual Motor versions, hence the ‘D’ in the version name.
The Model S P85D accelerated as well as the 2014 Porsche 911 GT3.
Less than a year later, in 2015, the Model S P90D was launched. For an additional fee, it was available with ‘Ludicrous‘ mode which brought even more power.
‘Ludicrous’ was borrowed from the 1987 comedy film Spaceballs, where the spaceship Spaceball One could accelerate to a speed called ‘Ludicrous speed’. A frame from the movie:
‘Ludicrous speed’ was faster than ‘Ridiculous speed’ which was faster than ‘Light speed’!
Acceleration of the Model S P90D in Ludicrous Mode is as good as that of the 2015 Porsche 911 GT3 RS.
In 2016, the Model S P100D was launched. With the paid Ludicrous Mode, its acceleration was similar to that of the 2016 Porsche 911 Turbo.
I’m not afraid to say that the acceleration of the Model S Performance version made me feel pretty sick very quickly. And that was even before the Model S Plaid came out. Model S Plaid reaches 30 mph / 50 km/h from standstill in around one second.
By the way, the Tesla Plaid logo is also taken from the movie Spaceballs. A frame from the movie from the moment when the spaceship Spaceball One went to ‘Ludicrous speed’:
Tesla has never made a slow car, and the acceleration from zero to 60 mph / 100 km/h of the most powerful Teslas is the same as that of the fastest sports cars. The initial punch is even stronger, and therefore Tesla outperforms every supercar up to the speeds permitted in city traffic. In real life situations Tesla is the winner.
Powerful electric cars are not just super fun to drive, they also show the driver is not contributing to climate change.
After 14 years in production, the last Tesla Model S cars made were Plaid versions with the additional name Signature Edition.
Steve Jurvetson was the person to receive the first Model S in 2012 and he also received the last Model S Plaid Signature Edition car in year 2026.
Model S Plaid Signature Edition cars were made in 250 examples and only about 20 cars were sent from California to Europe. The Tesla Model S Plaid Signature Edition cars are definitely part of automotive history.
The Tesla Model S was one of the longest continuously produced cars. Actually, it was still one of the best cars at the moment of its cancellation. The problem was that everyone who had wanted a brand new Model S, had already bought it during the 14 years of production.
Automotive achievements of the Tesla Model S:
- Battery architecture
- Super easy charging at Tesla Supercharger stations
- Over-the-Air (OTA) updates
- Self-driving capability
- The best accelerating production car
I feel gratitude toward the creators of the Tesla Model S. Tesla showed to legacy automakers what is possible and that kicked off the world-wide transition from CO2-cars to emission-free cars.