𝐵𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑒𝑠𝑡 When the Tesla Model S was released […]

𝐵𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑒𝑠𝑡
When the Tesla Model S was released in 2012, it was hailed as the best car ever made. Eight years have passed without a transfer of the crown, or even a serious contender. The big incumbents were stuck in a classic innovator’s dilemma. And Tesla, well, they have done it again with Model 3, and Y again… Now, I may be biased, so let me quote the automotive reviews from today’s WSJ:

“I look forward to a day when car critics can again suck their thumbs and opine about emotionally chilly styling and split hairs about human factors. Meanwhile, we have this car, this one program, beating the competition on core technology like a drum. From behind the wheel, everything else feels like a sluggish, sloppy antique, a squawking modem trying to connect to the cloud.

The Model Y’s satisfactions as a driving machine—its fierce, velvety acceleration, deep-pile powertrain isolation, the absence of friction and stiction, under load and under braking—are partly born of discontent with the current generation of stammering gassers, all with herky-jerky, multimodal drive programs.

From now until about 2030, and irrespective of what the U.S. federal government decrees, global car makers will be shrinking, hybridizing and digitizing their gas-powered engines until they vanish altogether. The endgame of petroleum will be a decade of dizzy, overtaxed turbo four-cylinders, cutting off and on at stop lights [start-stop hybrids], shuddering like washing machines.

Want to dive deeper? Seek out reverse-engineering specialist Sandy Munro, of Munro & Associates Inc. in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Mr. Munro, who typically sells his research to car makers, has made a remarkable series of YouTube videos tearing down the Y to the last nut, bolt, and screw. Mr. Munro told the website Teslarati, “I don’t think anyone right now has a way of challenging Tesla.”