The World’s first luxury electric SUV is gorgeous. It’s futuristic. And once again, Tesla Motors is redefining the electric vehicle.
Tonight Tesla finally gave the world its first look at the production model, then handed six customers the keys.
The Model S is a $130,000 electric vehicle that will go 250 miles on a charge, carry seven people and haul more stuff than anyone but a hoarder might want with him. And although the X shares much of its DNA with the Model S, in many ways it eclipses that phenomenal car. It’s not just the design, which is futuristic without being weird. It’s not just the performance, which is holy shit fast. And it’s not even the dramatic “falcon” doors that lift like the wings of a bird.
It’s how all of those features come together in a vehicle that somehow makes an SUV not just cool, but desirable.
Reaching this point has been a longer journey than Musk hoped. This is the car that’s supposed to prove his company is more than a one hit wonder, and an interlude before the long-awaited Model III brings a $35,000 EV to the masses in 2017.
Musk unveiled a prototype X in 2012, saying production would begin the following year. He later pushed that to 2014, which came and went with a promise that we’d see the X this year. But then that’s Musk—he often makes big promises with short timelines, which might explain why he told us tonight that if he had it to do over again, he’d have made the X less complicated and therefore easier to engineer and build.
That’s just what Tesla does.