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| Joined: | Mon Nov 21st, 2005 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 6399 |
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EN: The Model S family sedan is slated for 2011, which is right around the corner. Is the average American ready for an electric car?
DO: Absolutely. We’ve developed long-range EV options – batteries that go 240 miles on a charge and can be recharged overnight in a 110 or 220 volt socket, like a cell phone. The average driver in this country travels less than 40 miles per day in their car, and I think we’re evolving towards a situation where people are discerning car’s best uses – every vehicle in a garage doesn’t have to serve every purpose, so your Tesla can be your everyday commuting car, and you have another vehicle for towing, or long road trips. People are already doing that.
That being said, any market research in this field is, essentially, conceptual market research; there aren’t enough EVs on the road yet, so people are really forced to imagine a new situation, which can be difficult. We’re obviously focusing on the deep-penetration hybrid market – places like Los Angeles and Boston – but our goal is to make our vehicles attractive to everyone. At the end of the day, it’s incumbent on automakers to build attractive, fun, well-designed and high-performance vehicles. And that’s exactly what we’re doing and will continue to do.
EN: What about concerns that you don’t have an infrastructure in place to deliver and service these vehicles? The typical driver has probably never seen a Tesla store.
DO: Our store strategy is robust, and we’re rolling out stores in Munich and Chicago in September, which adds to our current stores in West L.A., Silicon Valley, New York, London and Seattle. By the end of the year, we’ll have rolled out new stores in Miami, Washington D.C., Toronto, and Monaco. But even where we don’t have stores, we employ remote techs who will make house calls for service and repairs and, if need be, personally deliver the cars to the nearest Tesla store.
Our view on all of this is absolutely long-term: We don’t need to sell an EV to every single person, tomorrow, to be successful. Over time, we will create a mass market for our cars that will be sustainable and grow based on vehicle quality, design, performance and customer satisfaction. These new vehicles are the next step in that evolution.