From novels to movies, and even from philosophy to history, we all know that some treasures have never heard their names, but they have not seen their shapes.
And once these treasures cross the legend and shine into reality, it is a historical node that opens or disappears from a grudge.
In the imperial race for electric vehicles, the name Model E is a legendary treasure.
Ford's Model family
Ford once changed the world with a car.
On October 1, 1908, a car named Model T was delivered at Ford's famous Highland Park factory, and its biggest feature was the use of mobile assembly lines to build cars, a mass production method that could make cars incredibly low in cost and much faster.
Model T accomplished two miraculous tasks, one is to make the United States the center of the world's automobile, and the other is to accelerate the car into everyone's home.
By the early 1920s, more than half of the world's registered cars were Ford, and in less than 20 years, 15 million were produced. That record wasn't broken until 1972, and by 2012, 40 years later, the Model T was still ranked #8 on the world's all-time auto sales charts.
It is precisely because of the excessive success of the Model T that people ignore Henry Ford's original product concept, in fact, the old Ford's concept of the car empire, starting from the Model A, the letters are in descending order.
Before the Model T, Ford's most successful model was called the Model N, and the front model of the Model T was actually called the Model S.
It was not until 1927 that the Model T was discontinued that Ford officially launched the Model A to inherit its mantle, and since then, Ford has successively owned model A, B, C, F, and K.
Curiously, the Model E, which is easy to find in English, never entered Ford's car sequence, and by the time the Fourth Industrial Revolution came, when the Internet and the wave of electrification hit quickly, Ford's product naming had changed dramatically, so it did not use Model E.
But Ford did register the Model E trademark for the simple reason that for the simple reason that Ford was running an electronic employee support system within the company — used to distribute computers to all employees — called the Model E.
Henry Ford once said, "It's useless to try to overtake a Ford, because there's always another one ahead."
Musk's secret grand plan
Exactly a hundred years later, there is another person in the United States who wants to change the world by relying on cars.
In fact, in retrospect, Elon Musk's moves, which in many ways are regarded as "deviant", have actually been practiced by Henry Ford.
Tesla, for example, placed great emphasis on improving production processes and methods from the start, much like the reason for the Model T's success.
For example, Tesla's model color options are very small, even configuration options are not many, and the Ford Model T is the extreme follower of this cost reduction and efficiency increase path, in fact, from 1914 to 1925, the Model T only offered black as a choice.
Even Tesla now does not spend money on advertising, the earliest is the old Ford's riot operation, because the Model T is too popular, Ford in 1917-1923, did not run an advertisement for this car.
If Henry Ford "put the world on wheels," then Elon Musk must be the one who wants to "power the wheels."
You can even find Musk's "Tesla's Secret Grand Plan" article published on August 3, 2006 on tesla's official website in China, and the official even playfully added the words "you know what I know" after the title.
Musk plans that almost all new technologies will initially have high unit costs, so it is necessary to make money first and then launch affordable family cars to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.
Therefore, according to Musk's plan, at least in the early days of Tesla, the following steps should be continued about car production:
1. Production of sports cars
2. Use the money earned to produce affordable cars
3. Use the money earned to produce more affordable cars
The sexy legend of Tesla
Fate, another car to change the world.
Just when Musk's "secret grand plan" was announced, Tesla's fourth car was already on the planning agenda internally.
At that time, Tesla already had the expensive and niche first model Roadster, and was preparing to bring the revolutionary four-door coupe Model S to the market, and the Model X on the same platform was basically clear.
The task of the fourth vehicle is also very straightforward: to become a best-selling car that is widely electrified.
At the time, the car's internal code name at Tesla was Bluestar.
In 2013, Tesla's chief designer Franz von Holzhausen clarified in an interview that the car has been determined to have an engineering plan, and the vehicle will be the same size as the BMW 3 Series and Audi A4.