May
08
Durham to Get Tesla Dealership?
Durham has apparently made the very short list of cities that may get a Tesla dealership. The first dealership for the all-electric sportscar opened on Thursday in Los Angeles. According to Autoweek, the next wave of stores will come to Menlo Park, CA (Silicon Valley), New York, Miami, Seattle, and Chicago. The third wave, however, mentions Washington, Boston, and Durham.
The Tesla is the first wide production all-electric sportscar. It boasts acceleration of 0-60 mph in under 4 seconds and tops out at 125mph. Delivery time is currently 15 months for the $109,000 cars.
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May 8th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Who cares about the speed, what is the gas mileage?
May 8th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Website states that it has an equivalence of 135mpg. Guess that’s considering the fuel and/or cost to generate the electricity to charge.
I like it. Reminds me a lot of the Lotus Elise. Many of the same lines; I wouldn’t doubt that they borrowed/bought a lot of technology and styling queues from their neighbor car company.
Torque must be great; this will be a very good short track car and a blast to drive. You think Sportdurst Lotus of Durham is getting the dealership?
May 8th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Haha! Just read that Lotus is in fact the builder of these cars.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Wow. If I ever win the lottery, that’s the first thing I’m buying! LOL
Congrats to Durham.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:43 am
I would LOVE to own one of these, but the price is so prohibitive
I’d rather pay $5 per gallon for gasoline than getting into debt for something like this. Why can’t they put together a car similar to Saturn Sky. The latter costs below $30,000 and it comes fully loaded. Oh well, we have to wait TOO long for this to happen.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:39 am
I own an Elise, and can tell you that this is a great platform for such a car. It is lightweight, small, nimble and sexy. However, it is also not a car for the average consumer. Even if the price were greatly reduced, it would only draw attention from jaw-droppers in the parking lot rather than draw sales in the showroom. Not many people would own one, because they are as far from practical as you can possibly get (on four wheels). So, it is a good platform to test the theory and design, but not for sales to the general public. And I doubt, even at 109K, Tesla/Lotus will recoup all of their investment even if they sold every one. The Lotus, which is a *reasonably priced exotic* (I often joke that our Lotus is somewhere between a *cheap* exotic and an expensive go-cart) still suffers from a small profit margin largely due to the short audience and R&D money going into each model. Even while its sales are good, Lotus continues to build their reputation and money on developing for other manufactures. The concept of the Elise market isn’t far from that of the Tesla’s: get a few cars out to advertise the technology that this company can produce. That’s my theory, anyway.