Last night at the Tesla Design Studio in Hawthorne, Calif., Elon Musk debuted The Next Big Thing from Tesla: The electric Model X SUV.
Musk, the 40-year-old South African founder of Tesla and SpaceX, debuted the car to an enthusiastic crowd of 1,500 venture capitalists, techies, early adopters, fashionistas and music lovers (Foster the People played later that night) who cheered wildly when the car appeared onstage. It has "falcon wing" doors--different from gullwing doors, Musk says, in that they open more up than out--and BMW-like good looks, which bode well for its planned sell-by date in 2014.
"They're called falcon-wing doors because they look like a falcon in flight," Musk told me.
He says the all-wheel-drive SUV is meant to combine the practicality of a minivan, the style of an Audi Q7 and the performance of a sports car, all with a range of roughly 300 miles on its electric batteries (the Model S sedan, though lighter, gets about the same range; deliveries of that car start in July).
During his 10-minute presentation he unpacked maybe a dozen bags from the front- and rear trunks of the vehicle (the battery lies in the floor) and deftly handled a few awkward moments when the front trunk failed to open because it was packed too tightly. Guests including Iron Man director Jon Favreau and Captain America actor Chris Evans munched on steamed lobster while they milled inside and outside the complex 30 minutes south of Los Angeles.
Model X seats seven adults through two front pilot chairs and two rows of seats behind it. Headroom inside is ample, with windows cut out in the ceiling and a large rear space; the seats fold flat in the back to allow for storage large enough to fit, say, surfboards, sound equipment or extremely large dogs.
According to Tesla, their newest addition will go 0-60mph in 4.4 seconds; a short ride around the studio grounds didn't exactly establislh that fact, though it did indicate the car drives extremely smoothly and silently.
The video above shows Musk describing the SUV earlier yesterday afternoon.
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