Elon Musk enters his era amid the Tesla renaissance

Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail.

Call it a tale of two centuries – for Tesla, it was the best of times; for Porsche, well, not so much.

The contrast in the launches last week of the latest high-end sports cars from the two luxury car companies reflected more than differences in the cars themselves. It was a stark juxtaposition of visions of what innovation in product development really is, and, perhaps, another example of the continuing redefinition of what the future will look like.

The debuts – staged on the same day – were about as far apart on the old-school-new-school spectrum as you could get.

In an austere, staid ceremony on a pier in Queens, New York, Porsche unveiled its latest super-car concept, the Mission S. The company said it was the same location used for the introduction of one of its early sports cars – the 550 Spyder – to the U.S. in 1953. It reflected a classic, if trite, marketing strategy: Lean on heritage as a potential predictor of future success.

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Guests gazed quietly at the sleek, sculpted gas-powered speedster, and in hushed tones marvelled at the fact it can accelerate from 0-100 kilometres an hour in just 2.8 seconds. Some mused, quietly, of course, that it might actually be more impressive than the German automaker’s legendary 911 model, a suggestion that still has purists seething. The price tag of the Mission S was breathtaking, too: between US$500,000 and US$560,000.

Meanwhile, 2,500 km away in a darkened SpaceX testing facility in Waco, Tex., heritage took the day off. Tesla’s new sharp-edged electric Roadster blasted off from a stage and went airborne from a ramp, propelled by cold-gas thrusters designed by SpaceX rocket engineers.

It was a historic moment not just in itself but for what it signified: What can be achieved when the two companies are combined, an idea the founder Elon Musk endorsed this week.

The Tesla Roadster jumped a cluster of other cars, spun in the air and landed in a cloud of mist from the rockets. The crowd gasped and applauded as its creator, Mr. Musk, reminded the faithful that the thrusters enable the car to go from 0-100 in less than one second. That speed comes at a price. The estimated base price of the Roadster will be US$200,000. The souped up Thrust model, complete with SpaceX thrusters, will be US$250,000.

Video footage of Tesla’s “flying” car stunt flooded social media, television news reports and other platforms. Porsche’s launch was less visible, a deficit that will likely have the automaker’s leadership reminding the marketing department to look at the competitive calendar more carefully next time.

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Ferrari’s chief executive officer, Benedetto Vigna, gave the Roadster event a 10 out of 10 rating for both technology and presentation.

“As a European, thank you for showing us how that, even in an old world, you can still innovate and dare,” Mr. Vigna said.

Mr. Vigna knows something about the precariousness of being on the bleeding edge of innovation. The introduction in May of Ferrari’s first all-electric vehicle – the Luce – polarized the iconic Italian brand’s fans and industry watchers alike.

The car’s clunky, bulbous design was seen by many as inelegant by Ferrari standards. Besides, others wondered, what on Earth is Ferrari, the gold standard for high-performance race-worthy machines, doing making an electric car?

Car aficionados may dismiss the Porsche-Tesla comparison as apples to oranges. Porsche lovers will say the new Mission S was never meant to compete with the Roadster, and its gas engine reflects weak customer demand for EVs. They will remind people that Mr. Musk’s idea has been in development for almost a decade – an eternity in the automotive world – and that what was introduced last week was the second iteration of the car. And they will harrumph skeptically at his claims that the new car, with a well-publicized track record of development delays, will actually go into production in 2028.

Tesla faithful will say the Roadster, whenever it comes to market and whether or not it can actually fly, is the future of personal travel. By contrast, the Mission S is just another legacy dinosaur – fearsomely powerful, elegantly aggressive but positively prehistoric in its technology and tone-deaf to the rising environmental consciousness of the next generations of car buyers.

Was launch day for these cars a defining moment in an evolution of thinking that goes far beyond automobiles? Perhaps. At the very least, the starkly different debuts mark a further shift in the tide of innovation.