Photo: Visual Capitalist
If you think about it, the parallels between Ford's legendary car and Tesla's products are stronger than anyone would have suspected. The Model T was a revolutionary vehicle during its time, and that's precisely the status Tesla hopes to achieve with its upcoming Model 3.
Elon Musk may have gone for the childish S, E, X, Y naming scheme, but he also included the "Model" part, which is a nod to the car that put America on the roads, as they say. It was probably regarded as a show of respect and a bit of infatuation at first, but the numbers show us that Tesla is following the evolution of the Model T with eerie accuracy.
Last year, the Palo Alto company fell short of its 100,000 planned deliveries, but it was still ahead of Ford Model T's sales in 1912, six years after it first came to the market, just like the Model S.
The Model T is credited with giving the U.S. government the incentive - and also the financial might through gasoline taxes - to build the network of roads that was dearly missing at the time. Tesla, on the other hand, had to deal with another lapse in infrastructure: the absence of charging stations.
Tesla's situation was different (the roads were shared with cars of other brands as well whereas there were virtually no other EVs in need of a large charging stations network), so it had to use a different solution: build them by itself.
With enough battery-powered cars on the road, the government did not remain idle and so there are now 42,011 charging stations in the U.S., most of them focused on the two coasts. Compared to the 430 in 2008, that's an increase of 10,000 percent in just eight years, and the numbers can only go up.
With its Gigafactory, Tesla also aims to revolutionize the manufacturing process, something the Ford Model T was also guilty of. Whether Elon Musk's company manages to reach its production goal of 500,000 units per year by 2018 (set initially for 2020 but moved forward by two years in 2016) remains to be seen, but if it does, the chart put together by Visual Capitalist comparing its evolution to that of the Model T will continue to show some uncanny resemblances.
Last year, the Palo Alto company fell short of its 100,000 planned deliveries, but it was still ahead of Ford Model T's sales in 1912, six years after it first came to the market, just like the Model S.
The Model T is credited with giving the U.S. government the incentive - and also the financial might through gasoline taxes - to build the network of roads that was dearly missing at the time. Tesla, on the other hand, had to deal with another lapse in infrastructure: the absence of charging stations.
Tesla's situation was different (the roads were shared with cars of other brands as well whereas there were virtually no other EVs in need of a large charging stations network), so it had to use a different solution: build them by itself.
With enough battery-powered cars on the road, the government did not remain idle and so there are now 42,011 charging stations in the U.S., most of them focused on the two coasts. Compared to the 430 in 2008, that's an increase of 10,000 percent in just eight years, and the numbers can only go up.
With its Gigafactory, Tesla also aims to revolutionize the manufacturing process, something the Ford Model T was also guilty of. Whether Elon Musk's company manages to reach its production goal of 500,000 units per year by 2018 (set initially for 2020 but moved forward by two years in 2016) remains to be seen, but if it does, the chart put together by Visual Capitalist comparing its evolution to that of the Model T will continue to show some uncanny resemblances.
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