A “xborg” on the Tesla Motors Club forum recently attended the opening of Tesla’s Oxford Store. For the benefit of many more people, he also took notes based on Tesla UK country director Georg Ell’s presentation.
You can view all of his public notes here, or read this article for what I consider to be the notable highlights. To kick things off, I liked his short description of George: “He is a nice talker and young, agile guy. He reminds me [of] Elon a bit.” Now I’m curious to see this guy talk. 😀
Perhaps the most interesting note of all wasn’t directly about Tesla, but about the street where the store is located. Apparently, Oxford Street is the most polluted street in all of the UK, and “4 days of pollution equals a year of an average street.” Wow. That comparison certainly makes me think deeply about all the time my family and I spend on some busy streets, and how much variation there is in pollution on different streets. And, as xborg noted, it is great advertising for Tesla to be on Oxford Street and to highlight that stat. We should all be acting to reduce such deadly pollution.
Regarding destination chargers in the UK, xborg writes, “They plan to deploy 160 destination charging points prior to hardware certification. Tesla is not chasing them always, most of the hotels, etc, want charger points so more people would visit.”
New Superchargers will be dropped onto the UK scene in 2016, including in Bristol, Edinburgh, Midlands, and elsewhere. But here’s the really interesting one on Superchargers, imho: “They were paying rent for some Supercharger locations. But now, since they are becoming popular, landlords of some facilities are not charging any rent for Supercharger locations. Tesla is just paying hardware cost and energy cost. At some superchargers, even energy cost is payed by the landlord.”
Perhaps most excitingly for Brits, the Tesla Model X will hit showrooms in the second half of 2016 (if all goes according to plan, of course).
The Summon feature, which Americans have been having quite a bit of fun with already, isn’t released in the UK yet, but it will be once regulatory approvals are granted. (Bureaucracy, bureaucracy.)
Also soon to hit Europe is Tesla Energy, but it wasn’t made clear when exactly the UK would get Tesla’s stationary energy storage products.
If you follow Tesla closely, you know that there’s more or less constant concern about Superchargers getting too busy, and a few instances where people have had to wait to use a Supercharger. The good news is, Elon has no intention of letting this become a common issue. “Elon hates queues at the Superchargers. He thinks that it is a virality killer. They plan to expand existing Superchargers too. They plan to build stations with at least 8–12 stalls.”
A few of interesting responses came out of a Q&A session as well. First of all, Tesla is unlikely to get Apple CarPlay, according to this source. It is also unlikely to include speed camera warnings in the sat nav.
Regarding the referral program, xborg summarizes: “They liked the first phase, but not the second, because people were sharing their codes everywhere. The point of the program is not getting a discount, it is about sharing customer stories and making people buy. They are redesigning referral schema.”
Interesting. I’m curious to see what they change regarding the referral scheme.
Image by Charlie (some rights reserved)