Europeans Seek Tesla 3; Musk Wants Self-Driving Soon

Electric cars have reached a “tipping point” compared to gas-powered vehicles asserted Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, in a tweet on Sunday. In an analysis of the spike in European sales and popularity of the Tesla 3, the website Inverse.com agrees that gas-powered vehicles will lose value faster.

“ ‘Given how quickly the world is shifting to electric vehicles, a gas/diesel vehicle bought today will probably have low resale value,’ Musk declared on Twitter. …Musk is not the first to suggest that electric vehicles are reaching this point. It’s perhaps a moment that’s more important than the actual sales figures: if the electric vehicle outpaces older cars on resale value, making the switch becomes an economic no-brainer. As the world marches to cut emissions and the grid gradually moves to renewables, it’s perhaps a shift that may have arrived at the ideal time.”

A new computer chip upgrade for the Tesla 3 is bringing the car closer to the vaunted fully self-driving model, too, a TechCrunch.com story reported in July. CEO Elon Musk is pushing to release autonomous driving as early as this year, according to a story in The Washington Post.

Musk’s Sunday tweet was a response to a CleanTechnica.com story outline how luxury European cars are beginning to lose value.

“Normal new car buyers may be slower to pick up on the market trends. If they didn’t put down money for a Model 3 reservation or at least jump into the crowd once production ramped up, there’s a good chance they’re simply out of touch. So, it should come as a surprise when they bring their 2018, 2019, and 2020 BMW 320i, Audi A4, or Mercedes C300 ‘luxury automobiles’ to auto dealers or the private used car market and find they lost far more value than the consumers anticipated. Nonetheless, that is what’s going to happen, and that is what’s starting to happen.”

All of these factors may be contributing to the tipping point, but one more may ensure that Tesla is at the forefront of electric car sales: a safer autonomous driving system.

Musk has attacked Lidar driving systems as a poor option, but could rethink that stance to speed up the move to fully autonomous car operations. An independent Lidar company, Velodyne, has installed the system separately from the factory install in some test vehicles, according to Forbes.com. Many believe the Tesla’s autonomous system would be safer by adding the laser-based, light-driven driving system along with the current Tesla combination of radar, cameras, ultrasonic sensors and GPS.

Already the Tesla “smart summon” system for the cars sent as a software upgrade, allowing owners to have Teslas drive short distances to them from parking spaces, is riddled with problems, according to Consumer Reports, showing that the company needs to improve its software.