It’s been almost 12 months since Tesla told us about its plans to reinvent the way cars are sold. Autocar caught up with Tesla’s then recently appointed sales chief George Blankenship, the man behind the successful Apple Store concept, at the 2010 Paris motor show, where he outlined plans to move Tesla showrooms into city centres and allow people to “entice, inform and engage” with Tesla products.
A year on, and Tesla has two of the new-style stores up and running, in San Jose and Colorado. Tesla’s still not making a cent on any Roadster sold (the 2500 production run was intended as a fact-finding mission for making its own bespoke Model S saloon) but the retail price of each Roadster is increasing and a record 190 Roadsters were delivered between April-June 2011, a 35 per cent rise year-on-year.
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