Electric cars, because, America

I'm going to ramble a bit here, so if you want to get to the flag waving quickly, skip to the end.

I wasted time recently taking one of those quiz type things on the Internets about your "political personality," and not surprisingly, I was almost dead center, leaning only slightly liberal (one axis was liberal/communitarian, the other left/right). At the very least, it explains why I politically disagree with pretty much everyone, since people adhere to a side as if it's a sports team.

In the greater sense, I'm so disenchanted with American politics because it's scary how much racism, xenophobia, classism, cognitive dissonance, hypocrisy, etc., is out there. Even science is made political, with total disregard for empirical evidence. To top it off, everyone is convinced that America is going down the tubes, and it's the fault of, I dunno, the gays or Obamacare or something. People are so fucking miserable in a time of unprecedented discovery and technological advancement. Minions are trending higher than photos of Pluto right now. That's messed up.

I don't buy any of this bullshit. In fact, I'm more excited about the future than ever before. Even working in technology, I'm not one to take the amazingness about it for granted. The Internet in your pocket is a miracle I couldn't have imagined 20 years ago. Well, all of that and I can't be miserable about the world because I would be less fun. It occurs to me, that nothing quite personifies my enthusiasm the way that the electric car does.

Some years ago, when Toyota introduced the Prius, I was somewhat in awe of the fact that they could make a vehicle that did more than 50 mpg. Fuel efficiency was not a priority for environmental reasons as much as a gradually rising cost. My senior year of college (1995), sometimes I could get gas for under a buck a gallon. In 2010, with Washington state taxes, gas was often over $4, and since the life-changing was already extreme with the move and all, I jumped on the Prius bandwagon, and I loved it. That low end and the coasting where the electric motor was engaged was the most interesting sensation ever, and on energy recovered from the waste of turning an internal combustion engine, no less!

Around that time, the Elon Musk had been CEO of Tesla Motors for about a year, put a bunch of his own money into the company, and took it public. They were building this crazy roadster and selling it for $100k. Living in Seattle, I saw quite a few, and the company would demo the car at internal Microsoft events around bonus time. It was fascinating to me, in part because Musk was clear in telling people that this would just subsidize a sedan, and eventually an "affordable" car down the road.

Meanwhile, late that year, Nissan introduced the Leaf, and while the range was not impressive, it was a practical commuting car. I made a connection in my head around this time, that a battery-powered car didn't seem that ridiculous when I was carrying around a (relatively) thin little super computer in my pocket called an iPhone. Knowing this, combined with my warm fuzzies over the electric part of the Prius experience, I started to feel a bit like burning liquid pumped out of the ground to get around felt archaic.

Fast forward a couple of years. Tesla releases the Model S in the summer of 2012 to real customers, with a huge backlog of orders. The next year, Motor Trend names it Car of The Year. It gets the highest safety rating of any car ever by the feds, the first perfect rating. Owners are crazy loyal and passionate. They manage to crack a nut that Detroit could not, and with a high-end premium product no less. They got my attention.

In the spring of 2013 I rented a Nissan Leaf on my visit to Orlando to interview and scope out neighborhoods. The awesome power and instant acceleration had me hooked. It was amazing. The range wasn't ideal, but I could see the potential. By the time we moved, I would see the Model S around town now and then. By mid-2014, I was seeing them quite a bit. After driving one, well, how could I not be totally enamored with the car?

About a year ago we leased a Nissan Leaf for two years. Diana's Hyundai, while reliable in the general sense for six years, had some pretty strange failures early on and in the end (pinched fuel lines and blown coolant hoses to the transmission). The Leaf doesn't need anything. There's no oil to change, no timing belts or filters. Motor is fed electricity, it makes the car go. Really quickly. It resolved any doubt we had about the future. It was electric.

But my love is for Tesla. Tesla is everything that's awesome about America, and here's why, in bullet point form:

• It's run by a South African-born Canadian-American immigrant, who believes in the opportunity of America. It continues a long tradition of immigrants improving and building our nation.
• Tesla proves that saving the planet is not exclusive of making money. A cleaner way to drive also happens to be potentially lucrative in the long-run. If Musk is wrong, ask yourself, why is GM going all-in to catch up?
• Admittedly, it's hard to argue what it is we "make" in software, but it doesn't feel like Americans really "make" anything anymore. A car is about as physical an object as possible, and nothing is more originally American than making cars.
• Musk's vision takes on everything about the status quo. It's not just about Detroit, he's also the largest shareholder in SolarCity, which takes on the very idea of centralized energy production and turns it upside down, pushing for distributed, renewable energy.
• If you have solar and you have a Tesla, your car is powered by the fucking sun. Think about that and let it sink in. Your space car gets its energy from space.
• An American company is leading the way where the famously efficient Japanese won't take a chance. Toyota, the manufacturer of every car I've purchased in my adult life (prior to the Leaf), is dicking around with hydrogen, which is not cheap or efficient (shocking since they know the potential leading the hybrid technology). Even Aston Martin's CEO recently admitted that they need to get on this electric thing, because wow do those cars perform.

So yeah, I love America, because Tesla. I want to be a part of that. I leave you with video of Model S P85D launches, because, America.