Sustainable Design - Tesla Electric Cars

This report analyses the sustainable design of Tesla electric cars and their impact on the environment and economy. It covers areas such as sustainable design and ecology, positive and harmful impact on the environment, sustainability and economic development, and sustainable design and culture. The report concludes that Tesla electric cars have revolutionized the market technologically and economically with their sustainable designs.

Running head: SUSTAINABLE DESIGN - TESLA ELECTRIC CARS
Sustainable Design – Tesla Electric Cars
Name of the Student
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Focus area 1:................................................................................................................................3
a) Sustainable Design and Ecology.........................................................................................3
b) Positive Impact on Environment.........................................................................................4
c) Harmful Impact on Environment........................................................................................5
Focus area 2:................................................................................................................................6
a) Sustainability and Economic Development.........................................................................6
b) Impact of Tesla Electrical Cars on Economy......................................................................7
Focus area 3:................................................................................................................................8
a) Sustainable Design and Culture...........................................................................................8
Conclusion and Recommendation.................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
Sustainable designs are meant to provide comfort to the customers along with implying
zero damage to the environment. It utilizes non-renewable energy with least resources, reducing
the amount of waste materials to build a productive environment. As the climate of our earth is
continuously changing, it is becoming more important that the sustainable designs are
implemented to protect our planet from more destruction (Ellingsen, Singh and Strømman 2016).
Sustainable designs produce the products that help in the preservation and protection of water.
They use the products which are eco friendly and increase the quality of maintenance and
operation processes (Voigt, Buliga and Michl 2017). The exemplar of this research is the electric
cars produced by the organization Tesla Motors.
Figure 1: Tesla Model S Electric Car
(Source: Tesla.com 2018)
Tesla Motors have been manufacturing electric cars since a long time and they are made
out of a lot of research and evaluations. Taking the comfort of the customers as well as the
environmental quotient with regards to the cost/benefit analysis for the organization into

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consideration, these cars have been developed by sustainable designs. Tesla Motors have earned
quite a name in the industry with these electric cars. Therefore, this report would analyse these
products as follows. The report would include the sustainable design and ecology that have been
implemented while manufacturing the electric cars and the positive impact it bears over the
environment. The report would further include the impact that the sustainable design of the cars
bear on the environment as well as on the economy and the impact of these designs in the future.
Thus, this would help in the understanding of the future of electric cars and their sustainable
designs in the market. The report would further carry on with the impact of the sustainable
design for Tesla Electric Cars on the environment.
Focus area 1:
a) Sustainable Design and Ecology
In designing process, the environment or ecology development is considered as the main
factor. It has been found that about 75 percent of oil is consumed by transportation in the United
States (Mehar et al. 2015). Furthermore, it has been implied that by 2050, there would be a
possibility of about 2 billion cars to ply on the streets, compared to the mere 800 millions in
2005 (Arora, Shen and Kapoor 2016). Therefore, it has to be kept in mind that the natural
balance of environment is being highly affected by human interventions and deteriorating
gradually. Any organization must consider the fact about the affects of their products on the
environment, especially the car manufacturers as the emissions from cars cause the most
interventions. In addition, the primary focus of the manufacturers should be on the products that
are utilized while manufacturing a car since they are not put forward after the end product has
been delivered. Instead, it has been found that almost 80 percent of materials that are used while

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manufacturing a car create the most interventions in the ecology producing waste materials that
are unable to disintegrate in the environment.
Figure 2: Sustainable design for Electric Cars by Tesla
(Source: Tesla.com 2018)
b) Positive Impact on Environment
It has been found in various researches that the electric cars produced by Tesla Motors are
better in comparison with other cars run on gasoline. However, this innovative technology also
has some shortcomings. If the manufacturing process of the electric cars by Tesla Motors is taken
into consideration, it could be found that a pile of Compressed Hydrogen Gas or CHG is emitted
throughout. CHG is categorically harmful for the environment (Tesla.com 2018). Just not during
manufacturing process, but these electric cars also emit CHG during its runtime. It is a noted fact
that even cars run on gasoline emits green house gases like Carbon Monoxide that deplete the
environmental balance adding to global warming (Bohnsack, Pinkse and Kolk 2014). Therefore,
it can be said that on a comparative analysis, the electric cars manufactured by Tesla Motors

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produce less harmful emissions. Electric cars are supposed to be totally environmental friendly
since the engines they use are electrically powered. Comparatively, these are better than hybrid
cars since the latter emits polluted gases (Mehar et al. 2015).
Figure 3: Tesla electric car emissions graph
(Source: Tesla.com 2018)
On the other hand, these electric cars do not affect the environment in a harmful manner.
It decreases the amount of carbon footprint in the environment. In this way it affects the
economy as well as the less a car emits harmful gases and adds to protecting the environment; it
attracts more market attention since electricity is one of the smartest investments. Considerable
reduction in hazardous pollutants like hydrocarbons, ozone gas, lead, nitrogen oxides and various
compounds of volatile organic affects the environment the most.

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c) Harmful Impact on Environment
It is not always true that an innovative technology implementation only brings in
advantages in favour of the organizations manufacturing them. Electric cars are highly dependent
on rare-earth elements like lanthanum, cobalt, neodymium and terbium. However, the amount of
rare-earth metal differs for every car (Nurhadi et al. 2017). Rare-elements are also limited in
resources. The use of rare-earth materials somewhat misbalance the nature equilibrium because
of their limited resource. Heavy batteries are required to run the electric cars, affecting their
wheels, and also brake pad utilization is greater in this car manufactured by the Tesla Motors in
comparison to other cars run on gasoline.
Focus area 2:
a) Sustainability and Economic Development
Sustainable design for Tesla Motors is built on the advantage of affecting the world
economy in a better way by adding to the massive quantity of power utilization. In addition, this
affects the manufacturers of local companies who are reliant on the global market as their
demand has become stressed due to the innovative measures of the Tesla electric cars. The
sustainability of Tesla electric cars can be judged by three aspects of the economy, these are the
public sectors, the private sectors and the non-profit sectors. Private sectors are the primary profit
generators for Tesla Electric Cars (Malik, Dincer and Rosen 2016). Public sectors rely on public
sectors for financial support. The need of social resources is met by the finance of non profit
sectors (Stringham, Miller and Clark 2015). Therefore, it can be said that the most profit is
generated due to the market demand of Tesla Electric cars since the private economy ranges have
huge demand for them providing the other hierarchy of the economic divisions. Sustainability

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design of these electric cars makes them not to require refuelling like other gasoline-run cars,
which adds as an advantage for the green-car markets.

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b) Impact of Tesla Electrical Cars on Economy
The mission of Tesla is to reduce the reliance on fuel and transfer the world to zero
emission. These cars that are efficient, best in performance and provide most safety on roads.
Tesla electric cars have the potential to overcome the challenges of economic development.
However, as per market demand is considered, it was found that the no-emission technique of the
Tesla Electric cars was initially not praised by the market and redeemed as illogical as well as the
designs for the cars were considered tacky (Krebs 2016). This made the Tesla Electric Cars
unacceptable to the market. This was later flipped by the organization by releasing their
sustainable model for the latest trailblazer cars that would change the face of green car market
and met all the expectation of the car enthusiasts in the market. Therefore, the Tesla Electric Cars
considerably increased the economic condition for many counties like California, Australia,
United Kingdom and others. Considerably economic rate started revitalising as the world shifted
from fuel to electrification, making the market demand for Tesla Cars rise higher. This made
countries rich in oil into having a hard time to adjust them to this latest development. Investors of
oil companies started losing cash including the workers being out of jobs. The cost of owning the
Tesla electric car is almost the same as owning a fuel powered car. Electrical consumption is
assessed to increase by 50 percent per person in possession of the Tesla Electric Cars (Martin
2014). Unlike the gasoline-run cars, these provide also for the electricity providing companies
since their consummation becomes higher with the sustainable designs of these electric cars.
Cost of maintenance of electric cars is also low as the wear and tear is reduced due to the fuel-
less insides in these cars. Thus, not just the environment, but economically as well, these cars
manufactured by the Tesla Motors are at an advantage than other cars run on gasoline.

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Focus area 3:
a) Sustainable Design and Culture
Tesla Motors have successfully implemented the idea of producing greener and personal
transport system with its electric car manufacturing. It affects the industrial contexts of the
market as well. This would further put forward the analysis of processes and operations of the
cars in being environment-friendly. Tesla Motors is aware of the fact that their factories and
power plants emit carbon-rich harmful gases considering the fact that their vehicles are run on
electricity. Therefore, they implemented Supercharger Stations that only use grid electric power
from solar panels. In addition, Tesla Motors have teamed up with SolarCity that provides the
owners of electric cars a chance of charging their cars with the implementation of personalized
solar panels (Nykvist and Nilsson 2015).
Figure 4: Sustainable design performance for Tesla Electric Car Model S
(Source: Tesla.com 2018)

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Therefore, Tesla is slowly removing the world’s dependence on gases and fuels. Through
the revolutionary technology of sustainable designs of electric cars Tesla Motors is gradually
becoming successful in solving an issue that has been declared as improbable since many years.
Figure 5: Tesla as Ecosystem Business Model
(Source: Tesla.com 2018)
Tesla Motors and their latest innovation for electric cars catered the designs and
consumer demands and have channelized it to form their first Gigafactory making another
organization called Panasonic to invest in the matter. Gigafactory is a power plant that is being
entirely run on wind and solar energy (Kumar, Srivastava and Dhar 2018). Therefore, Tesla
Electric cars are not only implementing their sustainable designs to create huge market demand
and benefit the company needs but also the organization is using this latest innovative
technology to profit the environment including the people around.

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Conclusion and Recommendation
Therefore, it can be concluded from the above analysis for the sustainable designs of
Electric Cars manufactured by the Tesla Motors that the latest innovation is not only a benefit to
the organization but also the environment and the people. Sustainable designs are meant to
induce environmental benefit with the implementation of latest technologies. The main criteria of
this would be minimum environmental harm with economic innovations and benefit to the
company as well. Tesla Electric Cars fulfill all these criteria with excels. The car does not emit
harmful gases and add into production of green-car environment, lessening the chances of green
house effect in comparison to the gasoline induced cars. Initially, the sustainable designs may
have been regarded as mindless and tacky but Tesla had remodeled them fitting into the market
needs. It is recommended that Tesla Motors should take all the positive and negative feedback
into account to focus on the further developments of the car models. This would only enhance
the cars utility of sustainable design to aid the environment as well as the organization’s personal
benefit. In addition, the organization also helped in providing for the environment by applying
the designs for electrical cars into their factories. They have also provided solar panels to the car
owners for charging the cars in collaboration with Panasonic. Therefore, there have been
positives and negatives about the Tesla Electric Cars and its sustainable designs, but the analysis
have found that the positive implementation of the sustainable designs have made it a
revolutionary change in the market technologically and economically.

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References
Arora, S., Shen, W. and Kapoor, A., 2016. Review of mechanical design and strategic placement
technique of a robust battery pack for electric vehicles. Renewable and Sustainable Energy
Reviews, 60, pp.1319-1331.
Bohnsack, R., Pinkse, J. and Kolk, A., 2014. Business models for sustainable technologies:
Exploring business model evolution in the case of electric vehicles. Research Policy, 43(2),
pp.284-300.
Ellingsen, L.A.W., Singh, B. and Strømman, A.H., 2016. The size and range effect: lifecycle
greenhouse gas emissions of electric vehicles. Environmental Research Letters, 11(5), p.054010.
Krebs, S., 2016. Silent by design? Tesla's Model S and the discourse on electric vehicle sound:
Tesla Motors Germany, Model S 85D (2015). Sound Studies, 2(1), pp.93-95.
Kumar, P., Srivastava, K.N. and Dhar, A., 2018. Role of Electric Vehicles in Future Road
Transport. In Sustainable Energy and Transportation (pp. 43-60). Springer, Singapore.
Malik, M., Dincer, I. and Rosen, M.A., 2016. Review on use of phase change materials in battery
thermal management for electric and hybrid electric vehicles. International Journal of Energy
Research, 40(8), pp.1011-1031.
Martin, C., 2014. Driving change in the battery industry. Nature nanotechnology, 9(5), p.327.
Mehar, S., Zeadally, S., Remy, G. and Senouci, S.M., 2015. Sustainable transportation
management system for a fleet of electric vehicles. IEEE transactions on intelligent
transportation systems, 16(3), pp.1401-1414.

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Motors, T., 2015. Tesla gigafactory. Tesla Gigafactory. Web, 28.
Nurhadi, L., Borén, S., Ny, H. and Larsson, T., 2017. Competitiveness and sustainability effects
of cars and their business models in Swedish small town regions. Journal of Cleaner
Production, 140, pp.333-348.
Nykvist, B. and Nilsson, M., 2015. Rapidly falling costs of battery packs for electric
vehicles. nature climate change, 5(4), p.329.
Stringham, E.P., Miller, J.K. and Clark, J.R., 2015. Overcoming barriers to entry in an
established industry: Tesla Motors. California Management Review, 57(4), pp.85-103.
Tesla.com. (2018). Model S | Tesla Australia. [online] Available at:
https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/models [Accessed 22 Apr. 2018].
Voigt, K.I., Buliga, O. and Michl, K., 2017. Driving Against the Tide: The Case of Tesla Motors.
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