THE CLASSIC CHICKEN AND THE EGG STORY
Famed Internet entreprenuer Elon Musk has an iron in many fires. SpaceX, his company that is trying to break into the commercial human space transportation sector. A solar panel company and the Telsa electric car.
In this open letter I would like to offer a suggestion on a different approach.
Dear Mr. Musk,
In my humble opinion you are focusing on the wrong issue for converting the petrolum based automobile market into an electrical car market.
The problem with developing a new form of transportation isn't in the actual item that will be the new "horse/car" it is in the servicing of that new item.
When the horseless carriage appeared, the real stumbling block for widespread mass appeal for the new tech was not the actual car it was that there were no service stations/gas stations for it.
There was already a well established system of "gas stations" for horses. There were blacksmith shops, livery stables and "horse doctors" all across the nation. The automobile had none of these support mechanisms.
Horse doctors, or vets, were the car mechanics of their day. Every small town had one before a medical doctor. It is the same today, most towns have an automechanic, few small towns have a medical doctor.
I would like to suggest you first design the electric car "gas" service station.
A customer drives their Tesla into a future service station and the attendant grabs a robotic arm, it grabs your car's battery pulls it out, moves it to the second story of the service station, plugs it into a battery charger slot and grabs a new recharged battery and plugs it into the car.
Use wind and solar to recharge the batteries where possible.
You could buy an acre of land every 100 miles from N.Y. to L.A. and build a demonstration service station at each one. I would not buy old gas stations, as you would/could be stuck with it's old enviormental damage.
I believe it would be more important to demonstrate a cross country, coast to coast ability than to first just saturate a single metro area like NY or LA.
Then have your car actually drive coast to coast and create a reality show around it visiting small town america and the largest cities, demonstrating your car getting serviced coast to coast.
Once the market sees coast to coast travel with electric is exactly the same as coast to coast travel with a petroleum you would not be faced with the same problem as the early car makers were, they didnt have the modern franchise marketing tools and experience in 1905 to do service stations like we have now.
You could also design an electrical tow truck to pick up a broken down vehicle or plug in a recharged battery. By extending the servive range of each station it will increase your potential customer base.
If you have a string of battery stations you also can have everyone within driving range as a potential customer.
======================== 200 miles
- - - - - - - - - - - - string of battery stations coast to coast.
========================= 200 miles
Buying a new car without the local support mechanism is like swiming at the pool without a life guard. Moms, with kids, don't like to do that. Offer them that assurance and safeguard with a string of service stations. They can be francised off later.
It isn't about how far you can drive your car on a single battery charge, it is about how fast can you change and recharge the batteries at a battery station. That is what will provide the unlimited range.
As long as a customer feels they are within driving range of service and a freshly charged battery sales would not face as many objections.
