Yahoo Finance I Paid $1000 to Wait in Line for a Tesla Model 3
From the June 2018 issue
I bought a new car. Sort of. I guess it’s more accurate to say I set in motion a plan to eventually buy a new car. Some people think I’m foolish to pay $1000 to join the line for a Tesla Model 3. Well, we’ll see who’s foolish when I’m driving my sweet new Tesla, which is scheduled to be built in June. Of 2022. Okay, I’m kidding. It’s not scheduled to be built at all. It’s a little early for that, since the people who will build my car haven’t been born yet. Kidding again! Teslas aren’t built by people. They’re built by other Teslas that have learned to replicate. Everyone knows that.
I’m willing to wait for a Model 3 because, unlike hundreds of thousands of people ahead of me in line, I’ve actually driven it. It’s like I’m the only one who’s gone on Space Mountain before and the rest of you are just hoping it’s as fun as your Fodor’s guide says it is.
Well, like Space Mountain and new seasons of Game of Thrones, the Model 3 is worth the wait. It’s an everyday car for people who love cars. The Model 3 has rear-wheel drive, a rear weight bias, and the center of gravity of a Miata. With the right tires, you could rule an autocross course in this thing. And in terms of acceleration, it will smoke any other EV that is not a fellow Tesla or a Jaguar I-Pace. It feels quick, even if it won’t turn your blood into platelet-rich plasma, Model S style.
The Model 3 interior takes some getting used to, particularly the side-view-mirror control knob, since there isn’t one. Instead, the scroll buttons on the steering wheel can be assigned that role via the center touchscreen. They can also adjust the steering wheel, and I think one of them can pop out and inflate into a full-size spare tire. Point is, I think I can figure out one extra step to adjust my mirrors as opposed to paying for a junky-looking plastic barnacle permanently attached to the door. I think all car companies go to their side-view-mirror-switch suppliers and say, “What’ve you got that looks like Fisher-Price made a rat tumor?”
So I dig the design, the performance, and maybe even the price, if Tesla ever gets around to building basic sub-$40,000 Model 3s. But the main reason I reserved a Model 3 is because it’s electric. Which maybe seems obvious, but I suspect that a lot of Tesla buyers would still want one even if Model 3s were powered by junkyard Subaru Justy engines.
A couple of years ago, I put solar panels on my house. So far, they’ve generated 15 megawatt-hours of electricity, which is enough to run a Model 3 Long Range for more than 55,000 miles. Then I added a Bosch Level 2 connector in the garage. With just these two items, I can charge a car directly off sunlight. That’s cool. Yeah, I’m using imported energy-imported from outer space.
And I’ll admit that I’m on board with the whole Elon Musk penchant for silliness in the face of impossible challenges. I think it’s totally awesome to launch cars into orbit and send over-the-air updates that enable your car to open its doors and flash its lights to Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Wizards in Winter.” And I appreciate the juvenile mindset behind a model-naming convention whose original rationale was to spell the word “sex.” Porsche wanted to try something like that but realized that it didn’t have enough cars to spell “extremely serious.”
Tesla is also forcing everyone else to go full throttle on R&D in a way that I doubt would have happened otherwise. If you love the Porsche Mission E, you can probably thank the Model S for its existence. And for everyone who’s upset over the recent backtracking of fuel-economy standards: Don’t fret, because the rush to electrification will solve that problem regardless of the regulations. Last fall in Ann Arbor, I hung out with two engineers, one from Ford and one from the EPA lab that calculates Corporate Average Fuel Economy compliance costs. They were discussing the possibility of a CAFE rollback, and the Ford engineer said: “It isn’t even going to matter. Things are improving so fast that CAFE is going to be irrelevant.”
Indeed, the reason the Chevy Bolt is a wagonish hatchback rather than a more salable crossover is because technological progress outran the development team’s original goals. According to someone who was there, GM was initially striving just to hit 150 miles of range, hence the adoption of the ultraefficient tall-hatch body style. But during the development of the Bolt, everything got better so quickly-motors, control electronics, batteries-that the team overshot its range goal by 88 miles. Surely now the race is on to stuff the Bolt’s running gear into something that looks like an Equinox. It’ll take some time, but repeat that process across the industry and pretty soon a 54.5-mpg fleet average looks quaint. Hey, I’m an optimist.
Which, I suppose, is apparent from the fact that I gave Tesla a thousand bucks toward a car that is, at the moment, a pile of raw materials scattered about the earth. I’d be surprised if I get a car within two years. Which gives me just enough time to figure out how to adjust the mirrors.
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