I thought it was that they are now taking reservations, but it seems they have been doing that for a while now (over 6,000 reservations have already been made).
Probably someone thought the Model X was neat so they posted it, then HN folks who hold TSLA shares voted it up because it's in their best interests to do so.
If you look at the side profile of the Tesla from the rear you'll see some Mercedes R class in there. Not the most flattering comparison but it was supposed to be Mercedes' version of a cool minivan with SUV characteristics. Tesla's own marketing copy even mentions minivans.
I'm guessing they branded this as a "SUV" to appeal to the market (SUV=cool Minivan=Not) more than as an accurate description of it's capabilities.
As much as I’d love if they got it down that far, is the vehicle significantly cheaper for them to manufacture such that they could sell it at that price (vs the $70k+ for the Model S)?
I believe their sub 50K "every-man" car is the next one after this SUV. Success might bring the price down, but they need the money from this to finance a more mass-market version.
I thought the doors might swing wayyy out, but they don't. Hell, the wing doors probably require less clearance to getting out of the vehicle than traditional doors.
A bit weird how much of the feature brief they dedicate to the doors, though.
It's a very odd decision, though. There's a variety of good reasons why minivans use those elaborate sliding-doors, and going with wing-doors instead is very surprising. The question is not "wing vs traditional" but, for a 3-row family vehicle, "wing vs sliding".
Sliding doors are heavy and expensive and complicated devices, but they can be reached by short children and have near-zero clearance requirements.
I wonder if they went with the wing-doors purely to avoid the "minivan" connotations of sliding ones?
How so? Looks to me that it's aimed at people who have to drive kids around, what with the "easy access to a 3rd row of seats" feature.
They've gone to substantial lengths to avoid having it bear traditional minivan styling - it looks like a sedan and is branded as an SUV - so it avoids the worst of the "mom-car" features. Other than the female silhouette in the door image, I fail to see how this is "feminine".
The government created the SUV market by enforcing dangerous CAFE standards on regular autos. (SUVs were considered trucks and exempt). CAFE kills many people every year because it has reduced car weight in the name of fuel economy. Since you can't buy a safe big sedan for your family, you buy an SUV instead.
I believe that (enforcing fuel efficiency equals more deaths) to be a myth. There's little correlation between fuel efficiency and safety.
SUVs ARE safer in front crashes.. but they're otherwise no safer than a car of equal price, which are usually way more fuel efficient (US cars in general are not fuel efficient at all).
It is also true that the least safe cars are all small cars, but that's more correlated with price than with size - an Audi A4 is considered a midsize car by US standards, yet it's one of the safest cars around.
The model X is more appropriately called a cross-over, and those are very useful cars. They're much smaller and easier to park in the city than a mini-van, but have more room than a sedan. The higher seating position is also great for visibility and shleping stuff in and out of the car without bending down.
I'm curious. Do you have kids? A few years ago I might have said the same thing as you, but with a car seat and pee-diapers in the back seat,[1] I'm really feeling the need for more room than I have in my 3-series.
[1] That in addition to being stuck in suburban Philadelphia hell.
Not sure what niche the all wheel drive fills. Most people I know with that kind of vehicle justify it as something they take up to the mountains every winter. While I'm sure it would handle great on icy roads, I could see the range being a problem, especially as this probably is less energy efficient with the higher profile. The other thing vans and the like are good for is packing heavy on road trips; same problem.
I'm just surprised that the options are RWD and AWD... in the North American market, RWD is the province of sports cars and Euro imports. I'd expect to see front drive on a family car like this.
Most of the country gets snow in the winter without going into the mountains. I fish-tailed my RWD car into a bridge railing last winter just tooling around suburban New York in light snow...
Sports doesn't mean literally sport (as in an organized competition), it means that the car is built with a sporty character.
I think you might be surprised at the number of people who take their sporty every day driver to a track though. Still, I'd be surprised if it passed 1%.
There are many levels of automotive sport, and at the bottom tier, you have fairly common activities like autocross and HPDE (high performance driving event). Both are low cost, low barrier of entry activities that are a lot of fun.
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