LAST EDITED ON Apr-05-16 AT 01:05 AM (EDT)
 
Over in one of the TIA4 threads, someone said:

>Hahaha, somebody kept an eye on the Model 3 product launch this
>weekend, didn't they.

Total coincidence; this story has been in the works for a long time and went back on the active list last week, mostly at Matt's urging.

I'm honestly not very impressed by Tesla Motors. All-battery electric cars are a dead end. Not only do they not have the range to be useful to people who live outside of cities—and contrary to the limited understanding of the urban hipsters to whom Tesla does most of its marketing, there are still a few of us—I doubt the general market even in cities is ever going to stand for an automobile that takes six or more hours to refuel, after a hundred years plus of cars that take five minutes. The first time most of those people need to go more than 200 miles in a day and discover that they can't do it, the bloom will rather fade off that rose, I suspect.

I'm not down on alternative power sources for personal transport, I just think they've picked the wrong one. If Musk had sunk all that effort and energy into advancing and promoting the fueling infrastructure necessary to make fuel cell cars commercially viable instead of chasing the all-battery rabbit, he'd have accomplished something worthwhile. As it is, I can't help but suspect that outside the urban centers, he's basically just cashing in on people with newly developed senses of ecoconsciousness, but no real understanding of what is and isn't practical in the everyday world, and he's not going to get a lot of repeat customers among that second group.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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