Tesla Plans Full Range Of Model S-Based Vehicles
According to a post by Diarmuid O’Connell, Tesla’s Vice President of Business Development,
The Model S platform will also be used for derivatives including a minivan, cross-over utility vehicle and a utility van for fleets and other industrial or civic uses
The Model S sedan already claims seating for seven, with a third row of jump seats under its rear hatch. But hey, why not build other models on the same platform? Nobody shopping a Tesla is going to care about overlap, price premiums or branding issues. The EV business model is still squarely in the “set a price and hope there are enough early adapters out there” era, and more models will help differentiate Tesla from competitors like Fisker. Besides, Tesla has made it clear that they don’t want to be a luxury car maker forever. Elon Musk sees high-end products like the Roadster and Model S Sedan as cocoon from which Tesla will emerge as a fully-formed, mainstream EV manufacturer. And if you’re going to worry about the Silicon Kids on the basis of this one blog post, it should be because of the following syntactically-challenged sentence:
We’re already engineering the Model S, a seven-passenger family sedan that will have a base price of $49,900 after a federal tax credit that will cost the equivalent of a car that retails for $35,000, given the relatively expensive cost of gasoline vs. electricity.
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I remember reading that GM is involved with Tesla. That's a big turn-off for me.
"Man, that's a beautiful car." (Amen!) With a hatch,too! They couldn't have picked a better look for some pretty expensive, electric Kool-Aid. I keep playing the powerball, though (fingers crossed).