Skip to main content

Torpedo on Wheels

By

2013 Tesla Model S

It has been fun following Elon Musk's bid to build the perfect electric car.  His Tesla Model S scored a near perfect rating in Consumer Reports, and since then his stock has soared in the business world, much to the chagrin of the big automakers and Forbes magazine, which continually rants over what it sees as overpriced stock.  Yet, Musk seems to be weathering the storm, thanks to his patented electric drivetrain and other components, which he sells to Mercedes Benz and Toyota.  This is clearly a man with a vision.

He reminds me a lot of Preston Tucker, who created one of the most innovative cars in 1948, nicknamed "The Torpedo on Wheels."  It had a great number of features that would become standard in the automotive world, but were seen as too revolutionary at the time, and his fledgling auto company was buried under an avalanche of negative publicity, largely put out by the "Big Three" auto companies.  Francis Ford Coppola paid tribute to The Man and His Dream in a 1988 movie.

1948 Tucker Torpedo

There is nothing new about the electric car either.  The pioneering vehicle was developed by Thomas Pinker in 1884, but with the advent of internal combustion engines and cheap fuel sources, there wasn't much interest in Pinker's horseless carriages.  The electric car  resurfaced decades later as little carts to tootle around golf courses and retirement communities.

Ongoing efforts to reshape the electric car were repeatedly squashed by "The Big Three," as shown in Who Killed the Electric Car? But, with the collapse of the American automaking industry in 2008, the bailouts stipulated that GM had to market an electric car, offering up the Volt, which hasn't fared very well.  GM seemed ready to shelf the Volt (like it did its pioneering EV1) when all the sudden the Tesla Model S made news, big news, and the major automotive companies were forced to take notice.

1997 GM EV1

Foreign automakers all have their version of an electric car, but similarly haven't made any great effort in marketing them, but Tesla appears to have stimulated BMW and Toyota into action, which like GM plan to introduce high-end electric cars to compete with Tesla.  What makes Tesla truly unique is that Musk is building a network of stations where you can recharge or exchange your Lithium-ion batteries.  This would allow you to drive your Tesla or any electric car cross country, as you would any internal combustion engine car.

Elon Musk, unlike Preston Tucker or Thomas Pinker, has managed to keep one step ahead of the automotive industry.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more