The Model S and Me

Recently, the Tesla Model S (and X) concluded their extraordinary production lives at the Fremont factory where their assembly lines will convert to make Optimus robots. Perhaps they'll assemble one-another as they walk themselves down the assembly line. Honestly, would you be surprised?

Well, there's been a lot of chatter and reflection over the Model S's exit from the stage. How it set the modern electric car market in motion and transcended the normal place cars occupy in our society. The Model T's departure 99 years ago, comes to mind.

While I'd caveat the Model S's celebration by pointing out that a few prior EVs, mainly GM's EV1 and AC Propulsion's tzero, anticipated many of its technical underpinnings, it was the Model S that crucially put all the ideas together. And added foundational ones of its own such as gas-rivalling range, the Supercharger system and over-the-air updates. I was there at the beginning of the Model S's journey, critically its winning the Motortrend Car of the Year award, and so here's my eulogy to add to the chatter.

But we need to rewind the tape a bit, as you can't really understand the Model S without understanding the technical ooze its life emerged from.

Last year I went to a public-invited talk at Caltech centered on the roles CalTech alumni had played in the history of the electric car. There were a couple of speakers including my friend, Dr Alec Brooks (his being a particularly significant role). Each talked about their participation in the technology's timeline, and as an aside, what I noticed was that not a single one said they were motivated by the economics of the EV ownership, EV charging time vs gas-tank filling, their acceleration, or quietness, or any of that. What they cared about was clean air and being engineers, efficiency. Two things inexcusably omitted by most reviewers of EVs these days.

Brooks and his friend Alan Cocconi (both already having created the GM Sunraycer solar car, the prototype for the EV1, and in Brook's case, the modern electrically-assisted bicycle) contacted Road & Track (where I worked at the time) about a Honda Civic they'd converted to an EV. They stopped by, I drove the car, and we stayed in touch. Later, Cocconi and a guy named Tom Gage founded a company called AC Propulsion (soon joined by Brooks) to build an electric sports car that became the tzero (one of the three ever built is at the Peterson Automotive Museum). At one point they wanted to experiment with its handling so we took it to an R&T- rented parking lot at the LA County Fairgrounds in Pomona where I drove skidpad laps as they tinkered with varying amounts of regen braking (there was a dial I could twist) to understand its lift-'throttle' yaw response (how it's rear-end stepped out; I don't think that had ever been done before with an EV). The tzero was dud sales-wise, obviously, but along the line, Cocconi came up with the idea of improving its range and performance with a battery composed of a huge number (about 6800) cheap, 18650-size lithium-ion laptop battery cells which just appeared on the market. About the same time, a guy named Martin Eberhardt started a company named Tesla (a name he and his daughter thought up while eating at the Blue Bayou restaurant at Disneyland). Eberhardt learned about the battery idea, did a deal with AC to use it, and incorporated it into their own tzero-like car – the Tesla Roadster - based on a Lotus chassis.

One day a guy named Elon Musk, flush with PayPal profits and determined to electrify transportation, showed up at AC Propulsion and drove the tzero. Impressed, he leaned on AC to join forces and mass produce it. Cocconi said no (a habit of his), but added that they knew a guy named Eberhardt at a company called Tesla and gave him Eberhardt's number. Elon quickly took it over.

I went to the press introduction of the Roadster (which used an AC Propulsion motor, the battery concept, and electronics Alan Cocconi invented) and sometime after, drove up to San Carlos (in the bay area) to drive it (then equipped with a short-lived 2-speed transmission; I think I was the first non-Tesla person to drive the car). At that time, Tesla was a tilt-up warehouse in San Carlos with – seriously - about four of five cars, total. A few years later Toyota essentially of-loaded their shuttered Freemont factory (an albatross on their ledger) to Tesla and in return got Tesa's help with an out-sourced EV 'compliance car' to meet California emissions requirements.

On an early first visit to Freemont (now with a few other journalists starting to show up) was a tech talk by Chief Engineer Peter Rawlinson (who later created Lucid) about the car they intended to build – something called the Model S. I was now at Motortrend and one day Tesla asked if MT's editor-in-chief Angus MacKenzie and I could come up to Freemont to see and drive a prototype of the new car. There were, maybe a half-dozen prototypes parked out front and Franz Von Holtshausen (the designer) walked us around them before Musk appeared and took us for a ride on the property (it's a huge place).

Eventually I was driving with Musk in the front passenger seat and I asked him if there was anywhere big enough to do fast circles (a skidpad again) to explore its limit, steady-state handling and regen lift-'throttle' behavior. He directed us to a large empty parking lot (all the parking lots were empty, with weeds sprouting here and there). As I went quicker and quicker – the tires howling, but in reality only going about 40 mph – I glanced to my right to see Musk holding onto the dash, looking genuinely tense. I though, man, what a wimp.

Eventually, they had some early productions versions and wanted to enter it in Motor Trend's Car of the Year contest. What I wanted was an electric car to have a level-playing-field shot at this, and went to work leveling it.

The first problem was charging. The car (there were two Model S's entered) would need charging at night at a Holiday Inn in Tehachapi, near the test venue; I went there, talked the hotel into letting us temporarily set something up, and got a early Level 2 EV charger company to bring two chargers out there. They were placed in a dirt area beyond the parking lot with big (240-v) cables strung from a power panel next to the pool. The harder problem would be the repeated charging necessary at the sprawling Hyundai Desert Proving Ground where MT conducted most of the testing and subjective evaluations for Car of the Year. I went out there with a Tesla electrician, and along with a decidedly irritated Hyundai electrician, it was agreed to place Tesla's own 480-v charger conveniently next to the building we worked out of. This 'charger' was a big metal box; actually it was the prototype of first, fast-charge Tesla Supercharger.

Before the 'official' judging began there was a week with just the test team (including me) getting performance numbers and photographers creating their catalog of photos. Sometimes during this week, a contender car would have a hiccup. The policy was we'd called its car company, explain the issue, and they were invited to send a technician out to make a quick repair. But once the judge's evaluation started, time was up; if a car glitched, it was out.

The Model S's were having serious door handle problems (like, sometimes you couldn't get in). I contacted Tesla and they sent engineers to Tehachapi. The first night, they sent up a floodlight in the hotel's parking lot (outside my window), tore the doors apart and replaced all the handles. Then, on the morning before judging started (the drop-dead cut-off point) a door handle froze again. I called Tesla and said, look, I'm going to the Starbucks down the street before heading to the proving ground. I'm going to leave it unlocked while I'm parked, getting my Mocha. If you guys want to have at the door handles again, the car will be there. When I came out, the engineers were gone and the handles worked again.

After a week and a half of the judge's (including me) evaluating, debating and finally voting, the Model S, staggeringly, was Car of the Year. Before the vote, one of the judges, an expert guest named Chris Theodore - a highly respected (retired) Detroit chief engineer - said it was the best car he'd ever driven. The vote was unanimous.

And the win was consequential. We'd heard that when it was announced at the Freemont factory, people were crying. It turned a spotlight on this tiny, fighting for its life start-up and made the world sit-up and notice. Tesla wouldn't explode into the most valuable car company in the world until the huge-selling Model 3 and huger-selling, Model Y, got off the ground. But there'd be no Model 3 without the Model S. A couple years ago I was a guest of the Chinese EV maker Nio at a fancy fundraiser for the Peterson Automotive Museum. Before it started I was seated at their large circular table when I sensed someone standing behind me. It was Franz Von Holtzhausen. Paraphrasing, he said, looking at the Nio folk "I'm just saying, this guy was there when we started".

A few Model S tidbits.