I'm kind of curious to hear the thought process behind people's decisions to get the Model S. Obviously most people will claim they wanted an EV, but I'm sure there's more to the story than that.
I wanted an EV. :biggrin:
OK, more detail. I'd been researching hybrid technology, and I'd decided that I wasn't going to get a car which didn't plug in. Both on environmental grounds and efficiency grounds, and on the grounds that I hated going to the gas station and most of my trips were really short and should run on electricity alone.
The time came to replace a car, and I put it off, because at the time none of the major manufacturers were offering a car which plugged in. (Odd that.) The only plug-in vehicles were home conversions (which I wasn't going to do) and Neighborhood Electric Vehicles -- whose top speed was too low for the road outside my house.
Then I discovered the Roadster, and I went "Wait... you don't need a gas engine at all, and you can go at highway speeds? And the range is enough to get to the next city and back? And it's in production now? All right, that settles it: my next car will not have a gas tank!" The eliminated maintenance, hassle, and environmental waste from eliminating the ICE was just too attractive not to go for it. So, just before the plug-in hybrids started being announced, I became a BEV purist.
However, the Roadster was just not suitable for me: a two-seater convertible with a small trunk simply does not fit my needs, at all. So I looked around for four-seater BEVs with full-sized trunks. And there weren't any. So I put off getting a new car, again. At this time Model S was merely speculative.
Well, Nissan announced the Leaf. Great! Except the range was too short for my needs. Nobody else came out with anything! In fact, so far, nobody else has come out with anything with suitable range. (I need a reliable all-weather 120 mile absolute minimum, but preferably 240.)
So I started paying very close attention to the Model S. I was sure Tesla could make a car (thanks to the Roadster), but I wasn't sure whether the model S was going to actually make it into production. Finally, after many delays, Tesla bought and equipped its factory (eliminating that concern), and released a driveable alpha build of the model S, proving that they could actually make the car.
At that point I looked at my cash and said "Hey, I have enough to reserve a Signature, and it's not earning any interest. The company won't go bust before the car comes out, so my money's safe with them. I might as well make a reservation." So I did so.
Since then I've been watching the news of the car carefully for "fatal flaws", and it doesn't have any. (Assuming my feet reach the pedals.
) So I'm getting it. The Signature is overpriced, but it just happens to have an extra feature for me: I'm not allergic to the interior. So I'm sticking with that.
So for me, it really is all about the electric. Model S is an *all-electric* car (my somewhat irrational requirement) which has enough interior space for my needs, goes fast enough to run on the roads in my area, and has the range to get to Rochester and back. It is the first car to satisfy these requirements and it is, so far, the only car to satisfy these requirements. And I'm years overdue to replace that car I was going to replace several years ago (which uses premium gasoline, has poor MPG, has fairly frequent expensive maintenance, etc...)
Edit: I'm seeing a lot of people saying "I wanted an all-electric car, and this was simply the only one with suitable range and interior space which wasn't vaporware." This, this precisely, is why I'm also investing in Tesla; I think the other car companies are being very slow to provide *any* competition for the market segments Tesla is in. The multiple-year head start is worth a lot.