Save the Environment, Save the World... (Why I bought an EV and would never go back to gas again)
Consumer Reports recently brought out its yearly Owner Satisfaction Survey, and Tesla finished number one, with a whopping 91% of owners saying they'd buy a Tesla vehicle if they had it to do all over again. That's an astounding figure in a highly competitive industry. It's like a Major League Baseball player batting .900.
So why do Tesla owners love their vehicles so much?
Well... I been driving my EV (Electric Vehicle Tesla Model X) For about a month now and besides the pure luxury of the car and the doors opening like a falcon's wings, thats not the only reason why I love it so much. For starters the tech, the non existent maintenance, the lifetime free supercharging, the regenerative breaking, Enhanced Auto Pilot, and best of all NO Gas Station Fill ups Ever!
I used to drive a Hummer H2 the worlds biggest gas guzzler at an estimated 9.5 miles per gallon, I was filing up quite often! Especially during the peak prices back in 2009 of $4 a gallon, I was driving back and forth to the Jersey shore on the weekend at around $120 a trip! So lets forget the price of gas for now and say I owned a gas station. The repairs to my Hummer in the 7th year of owning it (Right when the extended warranty expired were about $7,000 and up. New Water pump, ABS Module, Fuel Pump, Brakes, Suspension, Brake Booster, Throttle Body Assembly, Valve cover gaskets, Control Arms, Pitman Arms, and Steering Idler Arm just to name a few! The maintenance cost as the Hummer got older was getting ridiculously out of hand almost like having a new car payment ever month. Not to mention it became my secondary vehicle a long time ago.
So it made real sense for me to buy a Tesla, I did my research and found the one I wanted and never looked back ever since. I had a situation when the temp tags expired they weren't going to have my plates ready for another week, because this was the dealers fault they offered to put me in a brand new Ford Expedition free of charge until they straightened it our with DMV. Needless to say I was completely miserable driving that thing and couldn't wait to get back into my Tesla. The real joy of driving comes from the comfort and amenities of the vehicle. You don't have to use the brake pedal, ever and I mean ever! especially if you are in auto pilot. This means you pretty much drive you using the accelerator, or gas pedal as you gas driven vehicles are more a-custom to. Literally I just push the accelerator and release when I want the car to slow down, it will slow to a crawl pretty much and because of all the safety and collusion features in traffic it will come to a complete stop before the car in front of you without having to push the break. About the only time I use the breaks is at a stop sign or traffic light and thats only because Full Self driving has not been released yet in NJ. (Not sure if its 100% legal yet in the state).
The comfort of the seats is something that truly amazes, the way it just forms to your body with what they call vegan leather that Tesla had developed them selves to the comfort of the fabric in the middle. Elon Musk said they brought the development of the seats to Tesla because at first they used a third party company and that didn't match his standards of quality. So he decided to have them design their own. I can rant on and on about all the reasons why but how is any of this related to a web design blog? Well I chose to write about this because of Tesla's branding.
Tesla, by contrast, spends exactly nothing on advertising. That's staggering. To sell 250,000 cars in a year without so much as a radio spot, much less a big TV buy? Before Tesla pulled off the feat, you'd be laughed at and ridiculed into an early retirement if you even suggested that such an outcome were possible.
The no-branding ascent of a brand as widely know and beloved as Tesla is remarkable enough, but this mega-equity isn't actually the company's most impressive achievement. The accolade would have to go to its mere existence. Prior to Tesla arrival, received wisdom in the car business was that it's impossible to start a successful, relatively large-scale automaker.
Sure, you could see some Paganis and Koenigseggs establish themselves as very small producers of very expensive and very exotic supercars. But a 250,000-vehicle-a-year brand? Forget about it. And a brand whose car can knock the Porsche 911 out of a top slot for owner love? You're hallucinating.
Except that you aren't. It's pretty hard to hallucinate a $50 billion market capitalization.
Love, it seems, truly does conquer all when it comes to Tesla.
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