Re:SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private ...
by rayiner on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:07PM
(#18089667)
The first RAV 4 EV came out in 1997. Tesla was founded in 2003.
> No one was trying to make a non-toy full electric car until Tesla.
The Roadster was a toy, costing over $100,000 and selling approximately 2,500 vehicles, in the same ballpark as the EV1. The idea that it spurred GM and Nissan to build completely different EVs for the opposite end of the market is delusional. The timing also doesn’t work. It took Tesla several years to bring the Roadster to the prototype stage. Counting back a similar length of time from when the Volt was unveiled as a concept car, that means GM would’ve been working on it since 2004 or so, years before the Roadster came out.
Regarding the Roadster being "niche", it still looked like a normal car at least, unlike the EV 1, and any other electric car at the time. Furthermore, they had a roadmap to more affordable cars that still fit the moniker "normal". Other car companies were just running their EV projects as experiments, or as a way to appease California legislators to meet quotas, or simply retrofitting a non electric frame with batteries in a way that left much to be desired.
No one was trying to make a non-toy full electric car until Tesla.