The world, particularly the United States, runs mostly on fossil fuels. Experts on the matter say that we cannot survive on fossil fuels alone. We will need to find renewable forms of energy, green energy.
Power stations, planes, trains, and cars all currently run on fossil fuels and deplete the nonrenewable energy source every day. A large part of this depletion is due to combustible engine cars, so what do we need to do to make our lifestyle sustainable? Musk says cars and other forms of transportation, must become electric for this to happen.
So, how does creating electric cars make us more sustainable than we are now? In his first Ted Talk, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity …, Musk mentions that if we take natural gas, the most prevalent hydrocarbon fuel source, and we, “burn that in a modern General Electric natural gas turbine, you’ll get about 60 percent efficiency. If you put that same fuel in an internal combustion engine car, you get about 20 percent efficiency.”
So, if we take all the combustible engine vehicles off the road and replace them with electric vehicles, we more than double our energy efficiency.
Tesla was founded in 2003 by Musk to create a fully electric car that could compete with the world’s combustible engine market, which Musk says will be going down in the next few decades, and legislation from modern countries seems to suggest he is right.
Britain recently passed legislation with the goal of banning combustible engine vehicles by 2040, and other countries like France, India, and Norway have all passed similar legislation. With electric cars making up only 3% of the world’s car market, it seems that the United States is set behind the start line for this race, that is, if it weren’t for Elon Musk.
In his Ted Talk, Musk said there are three stages to Tesla’s business model: high-cost, low volume; medium-cost, medium-volume; and low-cost, high-volume. During the time of this statement in 2013, Musk said they were in stage 2.
With Musk founding Tesla in 2003 under the assumption of a changing world car market and legislation for electric cars being passed only in recent years, I would say he is a visionary well beyond his time.
Elon Musk 