MOTORTREND - TESLA MODEL S WINS ULTIMATE CAR OF THE YEAR - Still leading the way:
We are confident that, were we to summon all the judges and staff of the past 70 years, we would come to a rapid consensus: No vehicle we've awarded, be it Car of the Year, Import Car of the Year, SUV of the Year, or Truck of the Year, can equal the impact, performance, and engineering excellence that is our Ultimate Car of the Year winner, the 2013 Tesla Model S.
Only Tesla has survived, and it has thrived. (Hedge-fund short-sellers may be excused their doubts.) Today, we take for granted the number of startup electric vehicle companies coming out of the woodwork. But before the success of the Model S, it was virtually unheard of, defiant powertrain technology be damned.
Across the decades, automakers and their dealers have taken risks on cars that were pure vaporware. But none has seen hundreds of thousands of customers beat down their virtual door to throw money at a car that didn't exist yet from a company that had never turned a profit or delivered a product on time—and not just once, but for three of the four products it's made and two more it hasn't yet. Tesla perfected what Tucker pioneered.
Let's not lose sight of the car for its legacy, either. With the Model S, Tesla rethought many of the basic relationships between driver and vehicle. Seven years later, there still isn't another car that doesn't require a start button or key. The idea that a car would recognize your phone as you approached, unlock, boot up its computers, and be ready to operate and drive the moment you sat down and closed the door is still cutting-edge today.
The notion of replacing a vehicle's nearly every physical control with a digital one then updating the underlying software with patches and imaginative new features—all while you sleep and free of charge—is still just being emulated now.
And still, the better part of a decade later, there isn't an electric car that can travel as far as a Model S, nor is there a street-legal production car of any motivation that can beat a Ludicrous Model S to 60 mph, not even a Ferrari LaFerrari or Porsche 918. Meanwhile, Tesla remains among the front-runners of advanced driver assistance technology; Autopilot and Autosteer were both unveiled on the Model S.
The Model S changed the way the world thinks not only about electric cars but also about cars in general. Divorce the car from the controversies and polarized opinions of the company and its mercurial CEO, and it remains clear there isn't another vehicle created during our 70 years of existence that has had a truly comparable effect on automobiles, the automotive industry, and society at large.
Every car here was selected because it's the best representative of the decade when it won, and still the Model S stands apart. In our 70 years of identifying a Car of the Year, none is more deserving than the 2013 Tesla Model S.
Will Tesla still exist 70 years from now? Perhaps. But Musk's true vision was to electrify the world via an incontrovertibly earth-shattering product, not to create an automaking monolith. In seeing how Tesla's rivals are rushing to imitate its technology—sincerely, not with lip service—it is clear his vision is close to being fulfilled.
We are confident that, were we to summon all the judges and staff of the past 70 years, we would come to a rapid consensus: No vehicle we've awarded, be it Car of the Year, Import Car of the Year, SUV of the Year, or Truck of the Year, can equal the impact, performance, and engineering excellence that is our Ultimate Car of the Year winner, the 2013 Tesla Model S.
Only Tesla has survived, and it has thrived. (Hedge-fund short-sellers may be excused their doubts.) Today, we take for granted the number of startup electric vehicle companies coming out of the woodwork. But before the success of the Model S, it was virtually unheard of, defiant powertrain technology be damned.
Across the decades, automakers and their dealers have taken risks on cars that were pure vaporware. But none has seen hundreds of thousands of customers beat down their virtual door to throw money at a car that didn't exist yet from a company that had never turned a profit or delivered a product on time—and not just once, but for three of the four products it's made and two more it hasn't yet. Tesla perfected what Tucker pioneered.
Let's not lose sight of the car for its legacy, either. With the Model S, Tesla rethought many of the basic relationships between driver and vehicle. Seven years later, there still isn't another car that doesn't require a start button or key. The idea that a car would recognize your phone as you approached, unlock, boot up its computers, and be ready to operate and drive the moment you sat down and closed the door is still cutting-edge today.
The notion of replacing a vehicle's nearly every physical control with a digital one then updating the underlying software with patches and imaginative new features—all while you sleep and free of charge—is still just being emulated now.
And still, the better part of a decade later, there isn't an electric car that can travel as far as a Model S, nor is there a street-legal production car of any motivation that can beat a Ludicrous Model S to 60 mph, not even a Ferrari LaFerrari or Porsche 918. Meanwhile, Tesla remains among the front-runners of advanced driver assistance technology; Autopilot and Autosteer were both unveiled on the Model S.
The Model S changed the way the world thinks not only about electric cars but also about cars in general. Divorce the car from the controversies and polarized opinions of the company and its mercurial CEO, and it remains clear there isn't another vehicle created during our 70 years of existence that has had a truly comparable effect on automobiles, the automotive industry, and society at large.
Every car here was selected because it's the best representative of the decade when it won, and still the Model S stands apart. In our 70 years of identifying a Car of the Year, none is more deserving than the 2013 Tesla Model S.
Will Tesla still exist 70 years from now? Perhaps. But Musk's true vision was to electrify the world via an incontrovertibly earth-shattering product, not to create an automaking monolith. In seeing how Tesla's rivals are rushing to imitate its technology—sincerely, not with lip service—it is clear his vision is close to being fulfilled.
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