Tesla’s Model 3 and the transition to sustainability

The first Model 3s were delivered this week, and with it, perhaps the beginning of the end of the internal combustion era. This might be the way horse stable owners felt when they first saw a Ford Model T. The new Tesla is as snazzy as the very expensive earlier models, but its price is a more affordable $35,000 rather than the upwards of $100,000 cost of more luxurious models. Elon Musk, like the late Steve Jobs, seems to know how to bring a product to market and create buzz around it. Like the iPhone and the first Model T, the trick seems to be to create a good that you know people need, or could easily learn to need. Marketing geniuses seem to have a feel for how to create and sell these goods. It seems more craft than science, but listening to Musk, you know he has that feel. It’s true that a sustainable, renewable resource based economy requires fewer rather than more cars, but the cars we end up with need to be capable of running on electricity from renewable sources rather than gasoline refined from fossil fuels. The Tesla 3 is a big step in the right direction.