April 7, 2022 for Tesla is a watershed moment as this was the official opening date of the Tesla Austin Gigafactory. Although Mr. Musk didn’t grace me with an invite, I attended all the other events (including TeslaCon) meeting the fanatical (occasionally nuts) Tesla owners, YouTube “celebrities” and visited all the “earth-friendly” displays at these events. The “earth-friendly” folks actually believe they’re saving earth, they just want to do that by selling you a $7,500.00+ electric bicycle to drive to your office 25 miles away in the rain/100 degree heat. Then they leave in a HUGE nine-MPG air-conditioned diesel truck with their planet saving bike in the rear, for a 2,000+ mile trip to Oregon … wearing $350 Chinese-made Nikes and drinking from disposable plastic bottles and carrying away their huge polyethylene tents and plastic tables.
Anyway, I digress … the energy at these events was amazing and the owners, without exception, are the “true believers” of Tesla. Most are stock holders and many have Tesla solar roofs/panels/powerwalls and came to experience the largest gathering of Tesla owners in the world. The common consensus among these folks is that Tesla/SpaceX/Boring/Neuralink/OpenAI is the future, and are excited to be part of it. You can feel that something truly amazing is happening and we are fortunate to be alive to see it … Musk is giving humanity the kick in the ass it needs to jump forward.
My trip from the Houston area, around Austin and back home wound up costing me exactly $12.78 in electricity, where as one of my other cars, at four dollars a gallon, would have cost just under a hundred bucks (excluding Mercedes-Benz maintenance). My biggest expense with the Tesla was the hotel parking at almost $60, and about 20 minutes of my time at a Tesla Supercharger, which was actually interesting as the other cars being charged had owners wanting to talk about how much they love their cars. Experiencing all the events truly laid bare how antiquated gasoline-powered cars are. There are some folks who will laugh at this as they “rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic,” but every day makes you realize just how much better the all-electric Teslas are, over any car, at any price, you’ve ever owned. Hopefully, this new factory will cut delivery times as the order of a new Model Y has about a one year wait. Worth noting, that the new top-of-the-line, $119,000+ Jeep will literally drop several tens of thousands of dollars the very moment you drive it over the curb as opposed to a Tesla that may be worth as much as ten to fifteen thousand more than you paid for it.
Yeah … ain’t gas-powered cars great?
Just a FYI: Porsche just released their $450,000 street-legal racing supercar, and that has been already beaten by a $60,000 Tesla with $3,000 of upgraded brake pads and tires … Porsche’s gas-powered car is dial-up internet, in a Tesla fiber-optic world.
As I’ve said repeatedly, tech waits for no one …
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