One question, how was the Roadster delivered to the customers last time? Mark, did you go to Cyberport or Tsuen Wan to pick up or they drove the car to your home?
Mark wrote in a different thread that
Roadsters were shipped by air, while the
model S will arrive by ship. It is likely that deliveries will arrive in chunks, so that only the local preparation and delivery will spread out the delivery dates (as they cannot prepare all cars at the same time). It will be interesting to see how close together these ships will arrive. Surely, Tesla will not book an entire ship, but spots on ships carrying other cars - or even let them be transported on ships that are not made purposely for transporting cars only, maybe container ships? I think probably the latter, which hopefully means there won't be too long between ships.
Eventually, Tesla will hopefully have a
stock of cars with "popular set of options", so that you can walk in to a store and buy whatever is on the shelves. It's not for everyone to order a car and then have to wait up to three months before the car is built and then sent across the Pacific. Can you imagine a banker or CEO who walks into the store because his friend or colleague has a MS, only to find out it will take a quarter of a year before he can get it?
A few months ago I was in a Tesla Store in Miami, and upon asking, the salesman pointed at one of the two cars in the show room and said if I liked the options, I could walk out of the shop with that car. Or drive it out, maybe. I could even pay with credit card. First of all, I didn't need a Tesla MS in Florida, second, last I checked with AMEX, my credit was less than 80,000 USD, third, I hadn't brought my card to the store, so I ended up using all the cash I had to buy apparel, and walked more than 10 km back to my hotel as I had no money for transportation, only some for food.
But the car was there, any person with money could have taken it home. (the black MS in the front here)
I spent well over an hour in the store that evening. I kept saying goodbye and thanks, but I couldn't leave. On the long walk back I even saw a model S when the bridge happened to be up for a ship. Because all the cars had to stop, people got out of their cars, and I chatted up the driver and passengers of the model S. When they saw I was wearing a red Tesla Track Jacket, and I told them I just came from the Tesla store, and we chatted on. Of course, they were extremely happy with their car, smiles up to both ears. Too bad the pictures I took was so blurry, but at night, with the bright rear lights of the Tesla, it was very somehow hard for the phone to focus.
At the time, they only had the Hopewell centre garage facility (this was 3 years ago). Later, they were using Tsuen Wan.
