Author: By BRADLEY BERMAN

The automobile has not undergone a fundamental change in design or use since Henry Ford introduced the Model T, but the Tesla Model S has the potential to be a game changer.

Can you take an electric car on a road trip? To find out, a reporter drives the Model S on a 530-mile journey through California, stopping at Tesla’s Supercharger stations for fill-ups along the way.

The story of the 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV represents the melding of two corporate cultures — one a staid but successful Japanese behemoth, the other, Tesla, the disruptive California start-up — into a single machine.