Tesla Model X Spotted And Snapped

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The long awaited Tesla electric vehicle appears on American roads for the first time

The Tesla Model X will be a critical release for the electric car company which has grown massively in recent years. Although the fortunes of this innovative corporation have fluctuated lately, one only need look at the share price of Tesla over the last two years in order to understand how meteoric its rise has been.

Unfortunately, the motor trade is one of the most competitive industries on the planet, and it is completely impossible to stand still. Considering the high-powered vehicles that the world’s leading car manufacturers sell, this is perhaps appropriate, but it has nonetheless caused issues for Tesla in recent months.

Tesla Model X Spotted And Snapped

Tesla tested by delays

The Model X was supposed to be a very big deal for Tesla; its killer car app. But technical delays have caused the company problems in trading, and lead analysts and market followers to be increasingly skeptical about the claims of the corporation. This is perhaps a little unfair considering that Tesla is effectively attempting to do something which no other company has ever achieved; deliver a ‘sexy’ electric car. But there is no time to feel the sand beneath your feet in the auto market, and delays to the Model X have not been a positive thing for Tesla.

However, the company has cautiously penciled in a release date during the third quarter for this forthcoming CUV, and recent reports indicate that we are about to see this long awaited vehicle on the roads for the first time. Should you live in California, particularly in the Fremont area, then you may have the opportunity to view the Model X on the road before anyone else on the planet.

It has been announced in Tesla’s 2014 Q4 Shareholder Letter that a number of Model X prototypes will be cruising the streets of Fremont for practical testing. This is big enough news in itself for the electric car manufacturer, but for the thousands of people who have pre-ordered a vehicle, and so many other auto enthusiasts, even more interesting news has come to light.

Tesla X goes viral

One particularly eagle-eyed individual has snapped a few pics of a blacked out Model X, before posting them to a Facebook page. In a not hugely surprisingly development, these photographs soon went viral, and eventually found their way to the Tesla forum. Elements of the vehicle make it clear that this is not a production model, but it certainly gives an excellent impression of what the Model X will look like when it is finally released. One hesitates to say that this will definitely be in Q3 of 2015 given the previous delays, but this is certainly the date that Tesla has tentatively penciled into the calendar.

Recently, the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, has claimed that the design of the vehicle is complete, and the company is still very much on track to begin delivering to customers during the third quarter of this year. This sounds encouraging, but it is of course worth remembering that previous promises have not materialized.

Nonetheless, seeing this vehicle on the road, even in a testing capacity, is unquestionably good news for a company in a challenging position. Tesla by its very nature has a difficult job on its hands, as taking on the world’s largest auto companies, and an American culture which has been centered around gas-guzzlers for a very long time, is no picnic. It could be said in mitigation, though, that establishing yourself as a major brand was the hard part, and growing to be a genuinely top drawer car company is trivial by comparison.

Tesla’s Apple rivalry

However, Tesla’s prospects in the future could have been complicated even further. There have been numerous media reports in the last 24 hours that Apple is readying itself to produce an electric car in the short to medium-term. In many ways this would be a logical move for the consumer electronics giant, as it is exactly the sort of field with which it has been associated in the past. Indeed, Apple was linked with buying out Tesla just last year.

Whether or not the Apple stories turn out to be accurate, Tesla will certainly want to generate some momentum with the release of the Model X. With the charger network which Tesla relies on having been extended recently, and Seeking Alpha reporting that the Tesla Gigafactory, which is due to be fully operational by the end of the decade, is able to produce enough batteries for 500,000 vehicles, Tesla is strategically moving its chess pieces into place.

As the Model X is sighted on American roads for the first time, and fans of the concept of the electric car impatiently await its release, one can begin to perceive a future in which Tesla is a major player in the auto market. All that the company needs now is an enthusiastic response to this forthcoming crossover vehicle.

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