On the Fiskerbuzz-forum a Karma- and Model S-owner, Dennis, says he heard the Menlo Park-store took 150 orders last weekend. Can anyone confirm that? If true that would be huge. Post: Tesla sells more cars than BMW, Mercedes! - Page 6 - Fisker Buzz Forums
It IS innovative! It takes a lot of innovation to have so much horsepower net so little performance in a "sports" car!!
That is a hilarious thread. Hard to believe there are such die hard Fisker fans that are so anti-tesla. It is more entertaining then the anti-tesla posters on the yahoo financial message board. Sorry, that is way off topic...It seems possible to take 150 orders at that one store since there are lots of happy shareholders in that area.
Definitely going more mainstream, look at the volume of shares traded and the increase of news stories. There is a ton of momentum right now for sure.
Am not surprised that a Bay Area store could pull in so many orders so quickly. There are tons of Model S on the road here - as Elon put it in the Khan Academy interview, we are the "home team" after all - but, all the positive financial news must definitely have been the tipping point for a lot of fence-sitters.
I just can't image the number of orders that will come once they start advertising on TV. Most people don't know about the car and its performance level. Do a commercial with the car blowing away a BMW and Porsche, mention the range, zero gas, etc., and they will have to build a second plant to keep up with demand.
To help put those numbers in perspective, let's assume every weekend was like that for the following year: 52 weekends*150 reservations/weekend=7800 cars in a year from one store! That's 1/3rd of their production goal for 2013. The weekend was probably higher than normal based on TSLA being in the news a lot recently but that calculation also doesn't take into account the other 5 days in the week...Either way, pretty impressive numbers... It's killing me that they aren't ramping up production even faster than they already are but I'm in it for the long run and the rate they are ramping up now is for sure the best way to do it for the long run.
I was at the [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans]Topanga store in Canoga Park 2 weeks ago (prior to all the latest news & stock movement) & they said Sundays were their best day with an average of 3 new orders. [/FONT]
I read the whole thread and got some pretty good laughs. I think some of this is a case of envy at Tesla's success, some ignorance, and some denial. To say that the Fisker is beautiful is a real stretch, but if you think of it as a kind of odd beauty, perhaps. It's a very flawed kind of Alice in Wonderland styling exercise.
The Karma is a beautiful... it's just skin deep though... the whole drivetrain, engineering, and interior is a massive failure.
This could be part of it, they recently cut the reservation price in half. There are probably lots of TSLA shareholders in the Palo Alto area, too. Having the stock go up ~150% YTD would help increase interest in Model S and Tesla. (Some shareholders may have sold some stock and bought a car with the earnings.) That made me chuckle. :biggrin:
Ofcourse we still need confirmation of that number. And Menlo Park is probably one of the best selling stores in the country. We also know online orders are assigned to the closest store, so those were probably counted too. But even then it would be a extremely good score, especially if you extrapolate to other stores in the country.
I was visiting CA and stopped by the Menlo Park store. It is a very impressive store compared to the ones in Seattle and Bellevue. When I was there they had 4 roadsters and 2 Model S in the showroom and were giving test rides in a multi-color Red Performance Plus. With Silicon Valley Tech Geeks and that money I can believe a P85+ test driving could get them 150 reservations. :biggrin: Good for them.
150 in a weekend? That would be awesome. But, really? Even if we give them Friday as part of the weekend, that's 50/day, probably 5/hour, so one every 12 minutes!?! Seems too good to be true. Though when I spoke to the Denver guys last month and they said they sold a couple/day, and I remarked 'wow', they replied 'those are nothing compared to the California numbers.' Hmmmmm...
Wouldn't surprise me. When I spoke with my contact on the floor at the Menlo Park showroom a couple weeks ago, she said business was very brisk. This was before the recent announcement. My colleague who finally placed an order about 8 days ago had a hard time reserving a time for a test drive because they were so busy. Of course he quickly put his deposit in once he finished his test drive.
I think the 150 would include online orders in the surrounding area (which are allocated to the closest store). Still very impressive.