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As an owner of a Nissan Leaf, I'll take a stab at it. First, Tesla makes nothing but electric cars. Contrast this to Nissan who also makes the gas-guzzling Armada ("like an entire fleet of SUVs coming at you!"). Tesla has an incentive to make them not suck, all the way from the experience of the car itself to the sales process to keeping it charged (the Supercharger infrastructure). The Leaf buying experience, OTOH, was one of the worst I've ever experienced. I'll spare the details for another time, but if I weren't a hard-core early adopter Nissan would have had an extra Leaf lying around. I love our Leaf, but Nissan did little to endear me to the company itself. From what I hear of Tesla, though, it sounds like their start-to-finish-to-living-with-it experience could turn me into a fanboy. Second, though I'm really happy with our Leaf it falls a bit short in some respects compared to the Jaguar we got rid of to make room for the Leaf. The Leaf is a really nice compact car, but it's still a gussied up Nissan Versa. The Tesla, OTOH, is a nice car, electric or not. If they hadn't already sold out with a miles-long waiting list, I probably would have put money down on a Model S. I can see one in the car-owning future of my wife and me. Last, with the range of the top models it could be an only car for a lot of folks. Our Leaf can do a day of driving around town or further, but then it's back home to get plugged in. I can't think of a lot of places I'd go that a Tesla couldn't take me there. In summary, the Tesla Model S is the car that could take the industry forward. Nissan Leafs with a 100 mile range sold through a traditional dealer network probably aren't. |