With apologies to Howard Hughes in the film The Aviator, electric cars are the wave of the future. Some harbingers of that wave have already landed, with more and more car buyers seeing the sense of owning an out-and-out electric vehicle, given increasing fossil fuel prices.
One company that saw this wave coming and is now capitalizing on this momentum is Tesla Motors (Nasdaq: TSLA), which, just this week, announced it would be opening three new dealerships – in Bellevue, WA, Chicago, IL, and Newport Beach, CA, thus laying the groundwork for its flagship vehicle, the Model S.
The Bellevue facility cuts the ribbon Saturday, Chicago the weekend following and the Newport Beach store on November 18. The locations reinforce Tesla’s existing presence in markets where service centers are already open for business.
"Tesla is reinventing the way people buy cars, with stores designed to engage and inform prospective customers," said Tesla CEO and Co-founder Elon Musk was quoted in a company news release Thursday.
"Located in high foot-traffic locations, Tesla stores are designed to introduce people to Tesla’s advanced electric car technology and show the benefits of driving electric. Tesla stores lay the groundwork for the distribution of Model S today and increasingly affordable electric vehicles tomorrow."
The company loudly trumpets that 6,000 units are now on order for the Model S, which seats five adults and two children. It comes with three battery pack options, 160-, 230- or 300-mile range.
It can be recharged using any conventional outlet and is capable of a fast charge of 45 minutes. With no internal combustion engine or transmission tunnel, the interior of the car has class-leading cargo space, including a trunk under the hood.
The Palo Alto, California-based Tesla has fixed as its goal the acceleration of the world’s transition to electric mobility with a full range of increasingly affordable electric cars.
Tesla designs and manufactures EVs and EV powertrain components. Tesla has delivered more than 2,000 Roadsters.
The company’s stock trades on the Nasdaq Composite Exchange under the symbol TSLA. It closed Friday’s trading at $32.31, off 15 cents from Thursday, the day of the big announcement. Its 52-week peak was achieved on December 1 at $36.42, after hitting a trough for the year at $21.11 in late February. Proper due diligence before trading in this or any other stock is always encouraged.
