After nearly 14 years on the market, Tesla’s remarkable Model S electric vehicle is being discontinued. There will be no direct successor. 

Much will be said and written about the impact the Model S had on the automotive industry, but this will be one of those cases where the truth is more outrageous than all but the strongest hyperbole, because the shark-like liftback sedan has turned out to be more important than the Model T, the Volkswagen Beetle, or both of them put together. It is the only mass-production vehicle in history to completely define its segment, and it is the only EV that has ever mattered.

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These are bold claims, but they are easy to make. Compare the Model S, if you will, to the Model T. That humble, useful Ford put the country on wheels and, at one point, made up half of the American vehicle fleet, but its only long-term effect on the automobile was that it demonstrated what most of us did not want. By the time Henry Ford reluctantly pulled the plug on the endeavor, it was surrounded on the roads by vehicles that looked nothing like it and in many cases were sold based on their difference from the T. While most people today could drive Ford’s Model A, which succeeded the T, with little or no instruction, the Model T was operated with controls that simply never reappeared on the automotive landscape. In steady-state usage, you don’t touch any of the three pedals, none of which operate the throttle anyway.

(If you ever find yourself needing to drive a Model T in a hurry, which is an implausible concept to begin with, start the obvious way: by pushing the leftmost pedal to the floor, which engages low gear, then releasing the pedal to engage high gear. You might need to fuss with the hand throttle and the hand brake at the same time. Use your third hand, if you possess one, to steer.)

The Volkswagen Type 1 “Beetle” would eventually break the Model T’s sales record and serve as the official vehicle of the Woodstock Generation. But when it went out of production, it, too, was surrounded by vehicles that took nothing from its........

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