Did Tesla Take A Page From Hyundai’s Book?

As enthusiastic as I am about the actual product (when everyone was ready to crap all over Tesla based on some bad information, TTAC was one of the few publications to go to bat for the upstart auto maker), Elon Musk's series of announcements, frequently couched in hyperbolic descriptions of their significance, are beginning to grate on me. Every week, Musk seems to descend from Mount Sinai bearing yet another set of tablets that promise to "disrupt" (to use a favorite term of Silicon Valley) the automotive landscape forever, yet end up being little more than a not-quite-a-lease program or some announcement about after-sales care. A look through TTAC's archives shows that Tesla has in fact cribbed some of their ideas from Hyundai. While Musk has endlessly touted that his pseudo-lease program will guarantee the value of the Model S, Hyundai has been making that same promise since April of 2011. Meanwhile, Tesla's service program, which Musk touts as the "world's best" seems to have a lot in common with the one created by Hyundai for the Equus. Both involve having your car picked up from the location of your choice and exchanged with a loaner vehicle, ensuring that you never have to step foot in a smelly service department ever again. Perhaps we'll soon find out that Tesla overstated their mileage claims for the Model S, which would then allow us to really draw some parallels between the two companies. Oh, wait a minute… from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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