http://peakoilgarage.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/swedish-commercial-touting-tesla-roadster/ This is kind of interesting. It is a commercial from an electricity company in Sweden. It portrays old ICE cars in black and white, soaked in oil, etc. All negative overtones. Then it builds to a color video showing the Tesla at the end. The message is basically that going electric is modern and green. I wish someone would do this in the USA on a major television station.
Tesla has now delivered 150 vehicles (according to update today) and is currently doing 15 per week. They are increasing that to 30 per week in early 2009. They should be through their backlog of the 1,200 deposits by the end of 2009. They are still taking deposits, even in this economy, so there is no telling when they will actually be in showrooms where you could buy one on the same day. But Tesla is increasing their sales efforts now that cars are being produced in a steady stream. 1,500 to 2,000 Tesla Roadsters per year is about the same in terms of production that Lamborghini does. But Lamborghini does it with 100 dealers around the world. Tesla has two dealer showrooms in California with a total of perhaps 6 new locations planned in 2009.
As a small company, they're starting with a small geographical range. So to see one in a showroom you have to go to CA. But even the Prius had a long waiting list for a long time. (Maybe does again???) I remember when people had to wait 6 months for one. When a car is really popular, like the Prius or the Tesla, you have to wait to get one.
I am fully following the Tesla and other EV possibilities. The comment was more reflective of the frustrating aspect of advertising a car that is unavailable. Even when the Prius waiting lines were long, most dealers had one available for the showroom.
The Tesla is available and in the showroom. It's just that there are only the two showrooms, both in CA, and the waiting list is looooong. I was able to test-drive a Prius in November of 2003, before I bought mine, but a few months later that same dealership (the only Toyota dealer in Fargo, ND, where I lived at the time) no longer had a demo. They had a 6-month waiting list, and were discouraging people from ordering, though they accepted orders from people who really wanted to. But you could not see the car on the lot or test drive one. Very comparable situations. The only difference is the number of show rooms and the length of the wait.
