Home - AFV Events - Other AFV Events - Tesla Exhibit
Tesla electric vehicles have achieved market penetration that advocates of alternative-fueled vehicles like me could only have dreamed of when I started this website a quarter century ago. The impact of the Model 3 is blindingly obvious in this graph from my EV sales tracker webpage; its cumulative sales shot up like a rocket compared with those of other plug-in models, even challenging the quarterly sales figures of popular, and much less expensive, gasoline cars like the Toyota Corolla and Honda Accord. And the chart stops at the end of 2019, when automakers stopped making available the data that InsideEVs needed in order to derive the sales numbers on which I relied, so it barely catches the start of the even more impressive run of the Model Y!
I am unlikely ever to buy a Tesla vehicle -- at this point, it would feel too much like paying for a blue check over on eX-Twitter -- but I would be the last to deny that Tesla has brought electric vehicles into the mainstream automotive market to an extent unseen since internal-combustion engines established dominance with the introduction of the electric starter over a century ago. The Petersen Automotive Museum currently has a major exhibition examining how this transpired, which they call "Inside Tesla: Supercharging the Electric Revolution." The exhibition runs from November 20, 2022, to April, 2024, and I went to see it on June 4, 2023.
The exhibition isn't just a collection of Tesla vehicles but also, as you would expect from a museum of the caliber of the Petersen, an informative journey through the history and pre-history of Tesla, and of electric cars in general. This 2008 Roadster is the first production car made by the company, delivered to CEO Elon Musk; the floor in the historical part of the display was illuminated with several naysayers' quotes, like this one, from various publications at around that time. The historical section of the exhibit includes an electric 1908 Victoria Phaeton from the Columbia Automobile Company, exactly 100 years older than this Roadster, and shows photos of several vehicles exemplifying the "fall and rise" of electric vehicles during the intervening century.
The history of Tesla itself starts with this AC Propulsion tzero. AC Propulsion was founded by Alan Cocconi, who engineered the power electronics for the General Motors EV1 in the early 1990s; the company subsequently created three tzero roadsters to showcase their proprietary powertrain technology. Even with lead-acid batteries, its performance was impressive, though the range was sufficiently restricted that they also developed the Long Ranger trailer attached to the car here with a gasoline-powered generator to provide more energy for long trips (sort of an external hybrid). This tzero, built in 1996 (which I think makes it the second of the three), was retrofitted in 2003 with lithium-ion batteries, which store much more energy than lead-acid with much less weight. A group of Silicon Valley investors founded Tesla (Elon Musk bought in later) to commercialize a vehicle along these lines -- a high-performance, electric-powered sports car to compete head to head with gasoline models.
This 2002 Lotus Elise is "Mule 1," which was used to develop the powertrain while the chassis that was to house it was being developed; that's an aerodynamic buck for wind-tunnel testing of the bodywork visible right behind it. The body and chassis of the production Roadster were built by Lotus, after which the resulting "glider" was sent to Tesla for installation of the batteries and drivetrain. The Roadster was introduced to potential buyers in 2006, and came to market in 2008.
The Roadster established Tesla as a maker of high-performance, low-volume electric cars, as intended, but the company was already working to reach a larger market. The exhibit includes a battery pack made by Tesla for the Daimler electric Smart Fortwo, and Tesla also supplied powertrains to Toyota for their 2012-2014 RAV4-EV; these provided a financial lifeline so that the company could develop the Model S sedan, with this 2009 prototype shown in the exhibit.
The Model S was quickly recognized as not only a great electric car but an excellent car overall, with Motor Trend (founded by Robert E. Petersen, same as the museum) awarding it this "Golden Calipers" trophy as the 2013 Car of the Year. I remember the magazine cover in which this was announced -- in big print was the word "Shocker!"
The focus of the exhibit, along one long wall, was this lineup of significant vehicles from the company's history. From left to right are a 2021 Model S "Plaid" that set a Nürburgring record for fastest lap by a production EV; the prototype Model 3 shown at the vehicle's 2016 launch event; a 2012 Model X prototype; a 2020 Model Y Performance that was the one millionth vehicle produced; and a static "deck model" from 2017 of the planned Roadster 2.0.
Other planned vehicles, which haven't made it to market yet, were part of the exhibit as well. Outside in the parking garage is this 2017 "Alpha" prototype of the Tesla Semi, and indoors were a 40% scale clay model and several small models used to refine the design.
These are the first prototypes, from 2019, of the Cybertruck and, behind it, the Cyberquad ATV. Near them in the exhibit were a steel ball and sledgehammer (don't know if they were the steel ball and sledgehammer) as used in the infamous demo, where the combination of hammering on the doors of the Cybertruck prototype and throwing steel balls at its window resulted in the latter not being as indestructible as planned. Well, including those in the exhibit shows that Tesla has a sense of humor!
Also demonstrating a sense of humor, or at least fun, is a section of the exhibit on Tesla merch and fandom. Here are the Cyberquad for Kids (2021), a bottle of Tesla Tequila (2020), some "short shorts" (2020) produced to mock all the naysayers who lost money betting against the company's stock, a Cyberwhistle (2021), and a surfboard (2018). There was also a Boring Company Not-A-Flamethrower (2018).
Some parts of the exhibit discussed ways that Tesla is different from other automakers in how it does things. Its dealer-less, direct sales model is certainly unique; so is the degree to which the company develops its own manufacturing tech ("The Machine That Builds the Machine"), such as this Kuka robotic arm. The arm is holding a one-piece front underbody casting for a Model Y, and hanging above is the same component exploded into all the pieces that must be welded together for a version produced via stamping of individual parts. Behind these is a cutaway of a Model Y showing its "structural battery pack," integrated into the vehicle floor as part of the structure rather than bolted on.
Also on display was a huge Tesla Megapack 2 utility-scale battery from the company's power-storage subsidiary (we have a pair of their Powerwall battery packs in our house), and there were also some sections devoted to other companies with which Tesla has collaborated, and with which it shares a CEO, notably the Boring Company and SpaceX. Here are the the spacesuits worn by astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on the first (2020) commercial orbital human space flight, which delivered them to the International Space Station. Next to them is a 2010 Roadster like the one owned by Elon Musk that was used as a test payload on the first Falcon Heavy launch, with a mannequin named "Starman" at the wheel and on an orbit that carries him out farther from the Sun than Mars. Neuralink was also mentioned as a company that shares a CEO with Tesla; interestingly, eX-Twitter wasn't.
The Petersen Automotive Museum has a large, multi-floor building, but its collection is even larger. Something like 250 vehicles are displayed in the Vault, a vast garage with treasure after treasure jammed next to each other; they just don't have room upstairs to display all of their vehicles, most of which would be the crown jewel of many a lesser museum. Here, next to a Tesla Roadster, is the last of the three tzeros built (1998), with its side panel removed to show the original lead-acid batteries. The third tzero, which I think was the first one built (1994), was owned by The Gruber Motor Company and was destroyed in a fire along with several Roadsters in 2017. So the only surviving tzeros are at the Petersen right now. (In front of the Roadster are a Sondors Metacycle electric motorcycle and an Electra Meccanica SOLO enclosed one-seater.)
Also in the Vault is Ol' No. 99, the GM EV1 driven by Kris Trexler on his Charge Across America in 1998. Until recently, this car was displayed on the top floor of the museum, with pride of place in a display of automotive innovations. I hope she makes it back into the main display area again soon; I was more than a little disappointed to see no mention of the 25th anniversary of her cross-country journey, a few weeks before my visit. But with so many treasures in the Petersen collection, I guess all of them have to share the spotlight. Next to the EV1 is an electric Ford Ranger of about the same vintage; it has NiMH batteries, which (as with laptop computers in the mid-1990s) were an intermediate step between lead-acid and modern lithium-ion batteries.
The webpage for the exhibition describes it as "The Most Comprehensive Collection of Tesla Vehicles Ever Curated," and I certainly wouldn't argue with that! Leave it to the Petersen to do right by such an important piece of automotive history. I'm glad I was able to sneak in a visit during a business trip back to Los Angeles!
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All content copyright 1998-2024 by Mark Looper, except as noted. Reuse of my copyrighted material is authorized under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).
new 21 October 2023