Yeah, well I think anyone who likes fast cars will love the Tesla. And it has fantastic handling by the way. I mean this car will crush a Porsche on the track, just crush it. So if you like fast cars, you’ll love this car. And then oh, by the way, it happens to be electric and it’s twice the efficiency of a Prius.

In this remark Musk frames Tesla’s appeal in terms traditionally associated with high-performance gasoline sports cars—speed, handling, and track dominance—before pivoting to the “by the way” revelation that the vehicle is electric. The rhetorical move is strategic: it treats electrification not as a compromise but as an added advantage layered atop performance. By contrasting Tesla with Porsche (a prestige performance benchmark) and the Prius (a shorthand for efficiency-minded but unexciting motoring), he positions Tesla as collapsing a perceived trade-off between thrill and sustainability. The quote encapsulates Tesla’s early brand narrative: electric cars can be aspirational, technically superior, and emotionally desirable, not merely environmentally responsible.