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Home / Energy / Energy-General

Why Are Tesla Cars So Popular?


By Michael Kern - Mar 28, 2020, 1:00 PM CDT

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Shipment delays, fires, autopilots gone mad, and charging times that have yet to compare with the
time it takes to fill up a gasoline tank are only a handful of the problems Tesla has experienced since
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it became a mass car maker. Despite all these problems, however, people seem to love these electric
cars.  Here’s why.

Excellent Design and Engineering

If there is one thing even Tesla skeptics would agree on it is that Tesla changed people’s perspective
on electric cars. All electric vehicles before the Model S were, to put it mildly, unsatisfactory for any
driver. They were plain ugly, they were heavy, and they took forever to charge. No wonder interest in
electric vehicles was sporadic at best. 

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Then Tesla came on the scene and made the Roadster and the Model S, and everything changed.

The Model S had the design of a sports car, the safety of a Toyota, and could charge in minutes
rather than the hours it took earlier EVs to get juiced up. In fact, the Model S was safer: it became the
safest car ever tested by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, earning top marks
across categories.

The Model S was also fast, faster than any EV until then, and this proved crucial for the success of
Tesla cars as a whole by winning over thousands of gearheads who, although unopposed to the
environmental advantages of an electric car over a gas guzzler, want speed and performance above
all.

A Battery Revolution

Range has always been—and will likely always be—drivers’ first priority when they consider
switching to an electric car. Everyone used to a gasoline car is also used to the freedom of driving as
much as they want or need to, occasionally popping into the fueling station to gas up. Tesla probably
knew this, so it made a special battery pack and built a Supercharger network.

To date, Tesla’s battery pack is better than the batteries of any of its rivals. Tesla models have a
maximum range of 370 miles. That’s 370 miles you can drive on a single charge. The closest
competitors have a maximum range of below 300 miles, with some of the more popular challengers,
including the Audi e-tron SUV and BMW i3 sporting a range of just 200 miles.

Yet batteries on their own would not have been enough to make Tesla the brand it is today. That took
charging points, too. So Tesla built a Supercharger network where charging is not just quick, it is also
free. At one point, Tesla began to phase out the unlimited free charging option with CEO Elon Musk
saying it wasn’t sustainable. But last year, it appeared Musk had changed his mind and Tesla brought
back the free unlimited option.

The Car of the Future

Elon Musk has referred to Teslas as laptops on wheels, and this is an opinion Tesla owners seem to
share. In this Quora thread, for instance, one Tesla owner calls the technology in the car “out of this
world” and he doesn’t even mean the autopilot feature. Over-the-air updates, charger location, almost

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full driver control of car features, sensors in the Falcon doors of the Model X, the list can go on and
on.

Interestingly enough, people are crazy even about features that are yet to be added to the Teslas;
they are crazy enough about them to pre-pay for them and wait for years to receive them. A case in
point is the full self-driving mode that Tesla announced in 2016 but delayed in 2018. In the meantime,
people splashed $3,000 to $5,000 for the upgrade. When Ars Technica’s Timothy Lee reached out to
Tesla owners for their reaction to the delay, he found it was still overwhelmingly positive.

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Tesla, according to some fans and some analysts as well, is not your ordinary carmaker, and it
shows. It operates more like a software company, as one Tesla owner said on the Quora thread.
They develop a product, take in customer feedback and improve on their product right away, via its
software capabilities that allow for immediate updates rather than waiting for a new model to fix what
needs fixing. Tesla is, to most, the car of the future that is already here.

The Power of the Internet

The question of whether Tesla would be where it is today if it weren’t for the internet is an interesting
one and the answer is probably no. The internet is the only place one can buy a Tesla, directly from
the company. This is another unique take on car-making and sales on the part of Tesla, by the way.
There are Tesla stores around the world, but they are information centers and not dealerships. You
can learn everything you want about the cars at a Tesla store, but you can’t buy a car there.

Tesla fans don’t seem to mind as they are given the opportunity to configure their own car in the
comfort of a location of their choosing instead of haggling over the price and waiting for hours to sign
all the papers that accompany a traditional car purchase. There is even a relevant survey: Deloitte
found a couple of years ago that as many as 60 percent of car buyers would much rather buy directly
from a carmaker, cutting out the dealer entirely.

The things that most annoyed people in traditional dealerships were the paperwork, the haggling, and
the fact that a car purchase simply took too long overall. Tesla, however, doesn’t have these
problems. You go to the company’s website, you configure the car you want and you pay for it. For
preliminary research, you can visit a Tesla store at a mall near you.

The stores are unusual, too, in that the people there would not encourage you to buy a car:
something that placed Tesla last on a car salesmanship index compiled by Pied Piper. Its
representatives at the Tesla stores, according to the secret shoppers that took part in the survey,
acted more like museum curators than car dealers. This would have been bad if it was not a result of
a conscious effort on the part of the company to use its stores to only inform prospective buyers
about its cars rather than trying to convince them to make a purchase the way dealerships do.

Fun Sells

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Even the hardest Tesla critic would admit that if there is one thing these cars aren’t, it is boring. The
Model S became the fastest production car in the world in 2016, with acceleration from 0 to 60 mph in
2.5 seconds. Even the Model 3, the affordable model that was planned to turn Tesla into a
mainstream carmaker, accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds.

Acceleration is not everything, however. It is the whole driving experience that Tesla fans cite as
reason to love their Teslas. Sure, there are those who love the sound of a revved engine and would
not replace it for a “silent racer” but there seem to be plenty of people for whom noise is not the main

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thing.

Related: The Reason Why Russia Refused To Cut Oil Production


Many wax lyrical about how Teslas handle, but even more have fun with the Ludicrous mode—the
mode that allowed the Model S to accelerate in 2.3 seconds and whose name was inspired by Mel
Brooks’ classic Spaceballs. A Tesla, or at least the chief executive of Tesla, has a sense of humor
and this is an integral part of the appeal of the cars and, consequently, of their success despite all the
delays and unrealistic expectations.

The Musk Factor

It’s no secret that Elon Musk is at the heart of Tesla’s success. A controversial figure, no doubt, but
the man who, according to most, made Tesla what it is today. Tesla is the first—and only so far—car
company with a mission. That mission was detailed by Musk in his Secret Master Plan, which he
published in 2006.

Critics have called Musk a snake oil seller and a masterful marketer. While car evaluation ratings
have proved Teslas are not, in fact, snake oil, Musk has indeed proved to be brilliant at marketing,
grabbing every opportunity to advertise Teslas. By now he does not even need to put a conscious
effort into it. Every business venture the Tesla CEO starts pings back to the EVs.

A few years ago, for example, Musk started the Boring Company, which would drill tunnels
underneath large cities with congestion problems to alleviate these problems by moving part of the
traffic underground. The best car to take advantage of the tunnels? A Tesla, of course, since it is
emission-free. 

A couple of weeks after Musk showcased the latest in the Tesla lineup, the Cybertruck, the Tesla
online store began selling “Cyber Truck bulletproof tees” with the image of a shattered glass, the
company mocking itself after the supposedly bulletproof window of the Cybertruck got shattered on
stage.

Fun aside, however, Musk has become an icon for many with his sustainable future agenda, his
ambitions for Mars colonization and, not least, the fact that in 2014 he made all Tesla patents
available for all.

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“Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is
approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the
carbon crisis,” Musk wrote at the time. “By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our
true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the
enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.”

This paragraph sums up everything that matters for a broad section of modern society: the business
tycoon who is not in it for the profits but for the environmental impact. Critics and analysts have

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trouble wrapping their heads around the attitude since any business, by definition, exists to make
profits.

Yet Tesla’s main target group is the new generation of environmentally conscious people for whom it
seems to be more important that businesses are environmentally conscious too rather than profitable.
It is a growing group, which means a growing group of prospective Tesla buyers. Tesla has already
posted several quarterly profits over the years. It may well post a full profitable year at some point,
thanks in large part to the unconventional attitude of its CEO to making and selling cars.

Brand Loyalty Like No Other

Last year Tesla became the carmaker with the most satisfied customers for the third year in a row.
Consumer Reports said at the time Tesla had received 98 out of 100 points regarding the driving
experience, comfort, value, and styling, as well as things such as the audio and climate systems.

How telling this is about the brand loyalty of Tesla owners is evident in another Consumer Reports
ranking, this time of reliability. A year before it scored its third most satisfying car title, Tesla was
ranked second to last in terms of reliability. The Model X was even named one of the 10 least reliable
cars. Apparently, reliability is not as important to Tesla owners as all the things that make up the
satisfaction index.

Related: Big Oil Prepares To Suffer In 2020

Interestingly enough, this loyalty seems to have a lot to do with the simple fact that Teslas are electric
cars. According to an Experian study, EV buyers develop a deeper loyalty for this type of vehicle
once they buy their first. When they decide to buy their next car, some 62 percent of them choose an
EV again.

Yet for Tesla this percent is a lot higher: 80.5 percent of Tesla owners buy another Tesla when they
decide the time has come for a newer model. This is also the highest customer loyalty in the auto
industry, exceeding Subaru’s and Ford’s.

Based on all the factors discussed above this degree of brand loyalty should not come as a surprise.
Journalists and editors know that the words Tesla or Musk are the best clickbait in headlines,
guaranteeing thousands of hits. And Musk himself has been pretty productive with content generation

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with his Twitter account. This productivity even landed him in hot water with the SEC a while ago,
after he said he had plans to take Tesla private and had secured the funding.

Tesla’s CEO creates so much noise around himself it may be easy to forget that besides noise he
also makes cars. He sets unrealistic deadlines, he complains about unfair competition from the Big
Three and makes fun of short sellers, and insults people. He is also an iconic figure for millions. Many
of these millions are of driving age. They are buying Teslas and have a very good reason to believe
they are buying more than just an electric car. For many of them, buying a Tesla is buying a vision of

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a better, more sustainable future.

By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com

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