Supercars and exotics are our bread and butter here at duPont REGISTRY, and EVs don’t usually command as much attention. But yesterday at its Fremont factory, Tesla marked the end of the line for the Model S and Model X with a Signature Edition delivery event, and this is a moment that cannot be ignored. Why? Because it was the Model S that got the ball rolling for electric cars in the modern era, while also making high-performance accessible to the masses. Its impact on the auto industry cannot be overstated and can be mentioned in the same breath as the Ford Model T or VW Beetle.

Elon Musk took to the stage alongside Tesla’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, and Engineering Lead Lars Moravy to mark the occasion. The Signature Edition runs just 350 cars: 250 Model S and 100 Model X, each priced at $159,420 and available by invitation only (sold out). Every car wears an exclusive Garnet Red paint, gold Tesla badges front and rear, a numbered dashboard plaque, and a white Alcantara interior with gold piping.

Now EVs may be mainstream today, but looking back, the electric car has existed for well over a century. It competed with steam power in the earliest days of the automobile, and then gasoline won, and the world moved on. For most of the 20th century, the EV remained an R&D project, and early cars were far from being conventional or cool. Think GM EV1 or the infamous G-Wiz across the pond. Nobody wanted one, and Franz even referred to a Golf cart.

Tesla changed that, but the story of this change in perception did not begin with the Model S. It started with the original Roadster back in 2008, a low-volume, high-ticket sports car that was built around a Lotus Elise platform, serving one purpose: proving electric cars could be desirable. The Roadster also served a strategic function, as the Revenue from that car funded the development of the mass-market product that followed.

That car was the Model S, a low-slung four-door sedan that looked conventional from a distance and genuinely futuristic up close. It arrived in 2012 and made plugging in feel aspirational rather than compromising. Musk understood that performance alone would not be enough to convince skeptics, and so he built the infrastructure to back the cars up, which is why the Supercharger Network grew alongside them. 

In that respect, Tesla operated more like Apple than any traditional automaker, controlling the hardware, software, and ecosystem simultaneously. That network has since grown into one of the most expansive EV charging systems in the world, now open to vehicles from other manufacturers entirely. To really drive my point home on Musk’s impact on the auto industry and mass adoption of EVs, here was a CEO who was willing to go bankrupt if a rival company built a better car. Musk subsequently even made patents public.

The Model X followed in 2015, falcon-wing doors and all, and together the two vehicles ran for 14 and 11 years, respectively, before yesterday’s send-off. Combined, both nameplates moved roughly 750,000 units across their production runs. Tesla replaced 97% of the components across that period, meaning the final cars share almost nothing with the originals beyond the name. Over-the-air updates meant older cars improved after purchase rather than aging out, and Tesla has always positioned itself as a tech company first, pioneering several technologies over the years, ranging from scaling battery production and motor performance to self-driving and so much more.

Both cars also democratized high performance. Plaid-level acceleration had historically belonged to supercars and exotics, but Tesla handed that same performance to anyone who could afford a premium sedan or crossover, and the industry has not recovered from that shift. Also, looking at the market share, when the Model S launched, EVs accounted for less than one percent of global new car sales. Last year, those figures peaked at roughly eight percent, and in China is well over half the market.

On the collector case, Musk believes that the values of Model S and Model X will rise because the autonomous future makes driver-operated cars a finite and shrinking category. We don’t know how far out that is, but the original Roadster is already part of the collector car conversation, and here’s how much it hammered at not too long ago on duPont REGISTRY Live.

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Images: Tesla