Edmunds Buys An Electric Tesla Model S

If you read Edmunds, you probably know the news site hasn’t been particularly tender with electric cars. Leaning more towards it can’t work and as just another environmental hype, Edmunds is more known for its love of gasoline then electrons. Yet, when one of your competitor Motor Trend calls the Model S the 2013 Car of the Year, something needs to be done. So what does Edmunds do? Edmunds goes out and buys a fully decked out Model S to test drive on their terms, away from “Mr. Musk loaning us the vehicle and tracking our every move.”

Edmunds Comes of Age. It’s true that if you picked up any car magazine and website a decade ago, the landscape was very, very different. Cars were coming out in a predictable manner, with their automatic yearly facelifts and a car industry coaxing buyers into exchanging for new. Then, 99% of the news was around the internal combustion engine (ICE) and maybe some talk about the newly introduced hybrid.

Edmunds hasn’t been tender with electric cars but one thing we all desperately crave is impartial, unbiased info, a rarity these days of attention grabbers. It will be interesting to see how Edmunds rates the Model S. On the one hand, Edmunds is known for its frank point of view, as well as being very partial to gasoline cars but not electrics. Of all the electric cars to be tested, the Model S makes the most sense because it is the one electric car you could bring anywhere that would hold its own.

According to Edmunds: “We've tested the Model S before. Several times. And it has consistently impressed us with its abilities and technology. But as with the rest of America's media, Tesla, which is based in Palo Alto, California and builds the cars in nearby Fremont, loaned us those sedans for evaluation. We would drive the car for a week or two and return it to Elon. In fact, the first Model S we tested was the man's personal car.” See here for the original article. http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2012/long-term-road-test/introduction.html

All in all this shows us the electric car is very well entrenched in our landscape and will only grow in number and adoption as it matures. Edmunds certainly is showing the automobile news industry is coming to terms with what essentially boils down to yet another choice for consumers with electric cars and their purchase of a Tesla Model S test driving lends credence.