Featuring prominently this week has been the Tesla Model 3; the fully electric car that will be produced by Elon Musk’s innovative company Tesla Motors. I say “will be produced” because the remarkable thing about this car is it is not in production – almost no-one outside of Tesla has driven this car, yet it is effectively sold-out until mid-2018. Since March 2016, over 400,000 people have paid a deposit of at least $1,000 to reserve their car which they won’t have test-driven and which won’t be available until the middle of 2017 at the earliest!
The Tesla Model 3 is the latest in a sequence of electric cars which began with the Tesla roadster, priced at over $100,000 in 2008. The Tesla Model S, priced from $69,000, followed in 2014 and the Tesla SUV Model X, priced from $86,000, arrived in 2016. The Tesla model 3 will be a mass-produced vehicle priced from at a much more affordable $35,000.
The Tesla Model 3 is much more affordable, has stylish looks, a range of 200 miles, super-charge enabled, cheap to run – especially if you have solar panels, full auto-pilot facility and accelerates like… well the proverbial brown stuff off a shovel, So will you be trading in your dirty fuel guzzler for a Tesla and joining the other 400,000 + drivers across the world?
Elon Musk is probably very grateful for the injection of cash from the eager Tesla fan club. After all, his other pet project, space exploration with his company Spacex, has just managed to overcome a massive hurdle on what was possibly the final time of asking. With two failed landings of his Falcon 9 rocket, Elon Musk had almost emptied his extremely deep pockets. However, he managed to scrape enough cash together to finance one more attempt to create a re-usable rocket that can return to base.
On 19th February 2017, the Falcon 9 rocket landed back at Cape Canaveral having delivered supplies to the International Space Station. This is a major breakthrough for Musk who will use this technology to further his ambition of colonising Mars. Where will you be going on holiday in 2030?
“Taxi! Taxi! Take me to the top of that building over there!”
On 13th February 2017, it was announced that Dubai will soon have passenger carrying drones providing taxi services.The drones will be capable of carrying one passenger at a time, who will be able to select a destination on a touch screen display – take-off and landing points are preset.
The drones will be powered by electricity from batteries that will last for 30 minutes with an average speed of 60kph and range of about 50km.