READER'S BLOG: Elon Musk… flying over the cuckoo's nest

WARNING: ACERBIC SOCIAL COMMENTARY

There is no doubt that Elon Musk, the brains behind Tesla Motors, is a thorn in the side of the auto sector, with its institutional habits.

Once again Musk is basking in the limelight of disruptive marketing. His company's seminal creation, the Model 3, is poised (and priced) to strike fear into other manufacturers – especially those marketing cars named C-Class and 3 Series. With Model 3 the democratisation of EV technology draws ever closer.

Tesla's mid-size car represents a new epoch for the company, one in which scales of volume and supply expand way beyond that of the Model S and Model X combined. Nearly 400,000 people have lodged refundable $1000 deposits for their '3', a car they've never driven and most likely won't see until well into 2017 at the earliest. An order bank like that has the analysts murmuring.

Those analysts make a compelling case against the fledging manufacturer. Tesla's relative immaturity, they argue, renders it supremely vulnerable to mass production vagaries. A single engineering glitch or distracted production line worker will have severe implications for projected output of 500,000 cars per year.

And even darker storm clouds are looming: new products from established industry players to compete with Tesla's baby could slow orders to a trickle and leave the company high and dry.

At this point let's consider Ken Kesey's 1962 masterpiece, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, as a metaphor.

It's the Cuckoo's Nest that uniquely illustrates what Musk has done with his company to date. The billionaire founder of PayPal has already delivered a truly great act of market disruption. With Tesla the disruption – and its aftershocks for the mainstream automotive industry – have only just begun.

Over the course of this century and the last the auto industry has been analogous to what Kesey describes as a Combine, cowed by its own success and bound by conventions to produce goods conforming to rigorous, inflexible values. It has been very successful in this relentless venture. The internal-combustion-engined car of 2016 is a polished jewel of automotive engineering when compared with Karl Benz's Patent Motorwagen from 130 years ago. But when it comes to the electric car, the Combine has been its own stumbling block.

The Combine has been content to remain within self-imposed limitations. Even the most ambitious attempts – BMW's i3 is a case in point – have been hamstrung by an engrained philosophy that the pure electric car of the 21st century must be small, graceless and priced well beyond its internal combustion-engined peers.

Enter Elon Musk. To this Combine, he is Kesey's Randle P. McMurphy, a disruptive, charismatic adventurist willing to skewer a complacent, unchallenged industry.

With the Model S, the car that truly launched Tesla into the world in 2012, Musk accomplished what was supposed to be unthinkable. As an outsider he disrupted the institution of the auto industry, but also set it on a new course, with himself as leader.

And how? The Model S has overturned the law that the automotive future must be silent, awkward, compromised and soulless. Musk's masterstroke was positioning the Model S in a market segment where its price seemed congruent, not extortionate. It appealed to the sophisticated aesthete happy to forgo brand loyalty for simple, intuitive pleasures.

Designer Franz von Holzhausen styled the Model S to reach out to the consumer, evoking the primal responses that compel people to buy a specific type of car. 0-100km/h in under four seconds? 515kW? Yes please.

Musk understands that to change perceptions, one must first frame new thinking within enduring and instinctive elements of what is already loved. He saw that for his electric car to succeed, it had to court consumers, not berate them.

If we are to say that Elon Musk is a McMurphy-esque figure rebelling against a hierarchical industry, it's important to remember the deeper, melancholic message Kesey conveys. Caught up in an altruistic desire to end the iron grip of Nurse Ratched and her henchmen, McMurphy is spurred on by a groundswell of support from his fellow inmates, increasingly empowered by his audacious acts and his hubris.

Musk is now riding high on that same sort of groundswell. More and more people want a piece of the Musk rebellion, because it's exciting. The Model 3 is the product to service that demand, but if production capacity and quality assurance are overstretched Tesla is setting itself up to fail. Under a barrage of stiff competition from the established brands, the Tesla aura could fade into obscurity.

What the analysts may be overlooking is that the remnants of rebellion linger long after its leader's departure. As a last resort, Nurse Ratched lobotomises McMurphy to crush his anarchy, but her Pyrrhic victory leaves behind an institution deeply scarred and forever changed by the force of his whirlwind presence.

Musk, win or lose, has left an indelible trail for the industry to follow – whether or not the industry as a whole wants to follow that path. The electric car is now known as a product to excite the consumer.

And the industry is changing accordingly. In March 2015, Matthias Muller, CEO of Porsche AG at the time, was asked about Elon Musk's company and how it might impact the auto industry.

"I cannot say anything about Tesla," he replied. "I don't know anything about Tesla."

Fast forward to January 2016, and new Porsche CEO Klaus Zellmer took a rather different line.

"We look at what Elon Musk has done with Tesla," he noted, "and we have great respect for the company. Can we do it as well or better? We're taking up the challenge. I think we can."

Porsche, and every other auto maker, can likely do what Tesla is doing, and much better. Maybe Musk will brave the onslaught… maybe not. But where we go from here will be Musk's legacy.

How very McMurphy.

Guest reader: Harrison Boudakin