Elon Musk is hailed as a “genius” by some.
And he is, but not in the way they mean it.
Like Henry Ford, Musk took something he didn’t invent that was essentially a curiosity and recast it in a different way.
The difference is that when Henry Ford simplified the car by standardizing parts and mass producing them on an assembly line as opposed to hand-building them, one at a time, as had been a prior practice. The result was a much less expensive and far more practical car that almost anyone could afford to buy.
Musk did the opposite.
The early electric cars were simpler as well as more practical than non-electric cars; this was a big part of their initial appeal, 100 years ago, when they were (briefly) competitive with early non-electric cars.
You didn’t have to hand-crank the engine and risk breaking your wrist because, of course, there was no engine. Instead, an electric motor connected to the drive wheels and an array of lead-acid batteries. The car turned off and on–off you went.
You didn’t go very far, of course, and you had to wait (as now) for the thing to recover its charge. As the non-electric car became less fussy, especially after the electric starter motor was invented, it eliminated having to hand-crank the engine. It became the car of choice for most people because it made the most sense for most people. It cost less and went farther. It was not tethered to anything. It could be owned by a farmer whose house lacked electricity, for instance.
It gave its owner more freedom of movement, which is just the same as saying it gave him more freedom in that now he could afford to go wherever he liked whenever he wanted.
The electric car reverted to being what the non-electric car had been, at the beginning: A curiosity rather than a conveyance.
It remained that for the next roughly 80 years because the electric cars that were made after Henry Ford made his Model T were fundamentally the same as all the electric cars that had been made before. Some of them even looked like modern takes on the Model T, in that they were very basic vehicles–a flimsy box on top of a chassis and the main amenity being an On-Off switch. Most lacked even the “luxury” of a heater (in an electric car saps power from the batteries, further reducing the already limited range of the vehicle). Forget AC and other powered options.
Why buy such a car when you could buy a non-electric car that not only came standard with a heater but much else besides including the freedom that came with being able to drive it for hundreds of miles without having to stop, which made it easy to go wherever you wanted whenever you liked?
Musk’s “genius” was to recast the electric car as a high-performance, luxurious car with all the amenities people expect in any car and the acceleration capability that very few non-electric cars could match.
This made the electric car appealing, but not because it was affordable, practical, or efficient. In fact, the recast electric car was the antitheses of all of those things. In order to be quick it needed a massive battery pack, which made it both extremely expensive and extremely heavy making it inefficient.
But it was attractive in the same way that cars hand-built on custom bodies prior to the Model T were also attractive–but only a few people could afford them.
What Musk did was rebrand the electric car as something sexy and “new” even though the electric car concept is older than any Model T.
But he made it seem new and very sexy by making it very quick and very sleek, with all the very latest in the way of gadgetry. All of this served to distract from its unaffordability, impracticality, and inefficiency.
Musk grasped that people love to look at what they can’t afford, which makes little sense. A good example of this is the old TV show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Also, the general obsession with rich and (sometimes) attractive celebrities–few of which most of those gawking at and reading about will ever date.
But the problem remained. How to sell what most people couldn’t afford?
Enter Elon’s real genius.
Unlike Henry Ford, who appealed to the marketplace, Elon Musk appealed to the government. Not merely to subsidize what he was otherwise unable to sell but, far more fundamental, to promote the sell. It wasn’t merely an indulgence to purchase (or subsidize) an electric car. It was a kind of moral necessity due to climate change.
Then you suddenly have a “market” for electric cars. A justification for the subsidies and the mandates. For the outlawing via ever-stricter regulations of affordable, practical efficient alternatives to electric cars.
That is the nature of Elon’s “genius” as contrasted with that of Henry Ford.
Eric Peters lives in Virginia and enjoys driving cars and motorcycles. In the past, Eric worked as a car journalist for many prominent mainstream media outlets. Currently, he focuses his time writing auto history books, reviewing cars, and blogging about cars+ for his website EricPetersAutos.com.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
