Tesla delivers 500th Roadster to New Jersey man
Tesla Roadster - Click above for a high-res image gallery
From the first to the 100th and now to the 500th, the story of Tesla Motors and their initial offering - the Roadster - has been pretty heavily documented. The trend is unlikely to stop any time soon and, in that vein, Tesla is making sure to note the latest milestone, the delivery of the 500th Roadster. The lucky recipient is New Jersey's Martin Tuchman, who Tesla describes as chairman of The Tuchman Foundation and a board member of The Parkinson's Alliance and Parkinson's Disease Foundation of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York. Tuchman is apparently a car fan, with a 1967 Mercedes 250 and a 1993 Jaguar convertible in his stable. Those cars will get even less of a workout now that the Roadster is around and is scheduled to become Tuchman's main commuter car. It's especially nice that Tuchman will be using solar power to charge his new toy whenever possible.
Gallery: Tesla Roadster
[Source: Tesla]
PRESS RELEASE:
Tesla Motors Delivers 500th Roadster
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A New Jersey philanthropist was the 500th person to take ownership of a Tesla Roadster, an important milestone for the world's leading electric vehicle manufacturer.
Martin Tuchman, former chairman and CEO of Interpool, is chairman of The Tuchman Foundation and a board member of The Parkinson's Alliance and Parkinson's Disease Foundation of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He plans to charge his Roadster partly with solar energy thanks to photovoltaic panels he helped install throughout his hometown of Kingston, NJ.
"My Roadster drives like a dream -- it's amazing," said Tuchman, a former automotive engineer and owner of a 1967 Mercedes 250 and a 1993 Jaguar convertible. Tuchman converted his 1937 Chris-Craft into an electric boat so he could take it on nearby Lake Carnegie, which prohibits gas-powered boats. He plans to use his Roadster as his primary commuter car.
Tuchman took delivery of a Twilight Blue Roadster last weekend, a few weeks before the anticipated opening of a Tesla showroom in New York's Chelsea Art District. Greater New York is Tesla's largest market outside of California, and local EV owners enjoy numerous incentives.
Zero-emission vehicles are exempt from New Jersey sales, use and luxury taxes. Single occupants of alternative-fuel vehicles may also use the high-occupancy commuter lanes on the New Jersey Turnpike. These incentives are on top of a $7,500 US federal tax credit, which fully applies to all Tesla Roadsters.
Tesla will also soon be opening stores in Chicago, London, Seattle, Miami, Washington, Monaco and Munich. Tesla will begin deliveries in Europe this summer.
San Carlos, Calif.-based Tesla is the only production automaker selling highway-capable EVs in the United States or Europe. The Roadster beats nearly every other car for acceleration yet is twice as energy efficient as a Toyota Prius. It costs roughly $4 to refuel and can be completely recharged in as little as 3.5 hours.
Michael van der Sande, Tesla Senior Vice President of Global Sales, Service and Marketing, called the 500th delivery an important symbol for the world's newest production automaker.
"We now have more than 500 real-world customers providing valuable feedback on our cars and contributing to Tesla's spirit of continuous improvement," van der Sande said. "We intend to leverage our first-mover advantage and continue to build brand loyalty for years – from our 500th to our 500,000th delivery."
About Tesla Motors:
Based in California's Silicon Valley, Tesla Motors builds electric vehicles with exceptional design, performance and efficiency, while conforming to all North American and European safety, environmental and durability standards. The Roadster, which has a 0-to-60 mph acceleration of 3.9 seconds, is the only highway-capable EV for sale in North America or Europe. It is six times as efficient as rival sports cars and has a range of 244 miles per charge. Tesla expects to produce the Model S sedan in late 2011. The anticipated base price of the sedan will be $49,900 after a $7,500 US tax credit.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mark 12:58PM (6/03/2009)
Well done Tesla! This is a great milestone from a company that didn't exist 10 years ago. I hope they sunk dinosaurs like Ferrari soon.
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John 1:21PM (6/03/2009)
Dinosaur like "Ferrari"?
You are truly an idiot.
Mark Kiernan 3:28PM (6/03/2009)
What apart from word of a hybrid have they come up with? They are stuck in the 20th century.
BlackbirdHighway 1:10PM (6/03/2009)
Think this will finally put a stop to all the "vaporware" and "Tesla hasn't even delivered any cars to customers" comments?
No, I don't either.
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John 4:17PM (6/03/2009)
These are still expensive toys of the rich and not mass market vehicles. With the amount of cash that has poured into Tesla, and considering they didn't design the actual car, I would hope they could get 500 units on the road.
jake 9:07PM (6/03/2009)
I don't expect those comments to stop either. Even if they do, they'll keep moving the bar. I don't think they will be satisfied until it's 100k+ annually.
why not the LS2LS7? 2:16PM (6/03/2009)
That's quite a few.
I now have two friends with them, and saw 4 different ones in 2 days. To be fair, there are a lot of people around here with far too much cash on their hands. I see multiple M5s each day.
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why not the LS2LS7? 2:16PM (6/03/2009)
Oh, and when are they going to go back and fix the transmissions on the 1st gen models?
Chris M 4:51PM (6/03/2009)
LS2LS7: Already fixed. months ago.
Now what are you going to kvetch about?
duinneeile 3:48PM (6/03/2009)
500 electric cars how is this possible, the great sages who ran GM into the ground told me that nobody wants electric cars
When will the fools at Tesla learn that the people want fool cells, electric cars will never sell
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Chris M 4:54PM (6/03/2009)
Tesla had more orders in hand than the entire production run of the EV1, even before the first ones were delivered. So much for the "there was no demand, we couldn't sell them" excuse from GM.
why not the LS2LS7? 5:25PM (6/03/2009)
GM said they couldn't sell them at an affordable price. Tesla is not selling them at an affordable price.
GenWaylaid 3:56AM (6/04/2009)
Are they setting any EV sales records yet? They've passed the number of sales (not leases) of the RAV-4 EV, so maybe the Tesla Roadster holds the record for "most highway-speed electric vehicles sold of a single type." The production numbers for the EV1 were over a thousand, so they have a ways to go before they can claim "most purpose-built highway-speed electric vehicles of a single type manufactured."
It would be interesting to try to track down all the possible loose ends for determining EV sales records, e.g. early 20th century makes, fleet leases, conversion shops, and so on.
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boo 10:42PM (6/08/2009)
The important thing, which I discovered while doing a deep tissue google search the other day in the hopes of finding an EV for sale... is that Tesla is producing and selling THE ONLY highway capable EV in the entire USA right now. And probably will be for the next 2 years.
Even other promising ones like iMiev and Th!nk and Mini-E were for lease only, or only available in other continents. Everything else is a crappy NEV, concept cars that may never see the light of day, 400K craziness like the Venturi Fetish or used RAV4s with 10 year old batteries.
Tesla should be damn proud, and billion $ automobile juggernauts should be ashamed.
brn 6:06PM (6/03/2009)
On Letterman, didn't they claim to have sold 1200?
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Snoopy 8:28PM (6/03/2009)
Sold would be the keyword there. This was a delivery announcement. Remember, they're not mass producing these things.
brn 9:13PM (6/03/2009)
You're probably right. I got lost in the wordsmithing.
Snoopy 4:26PM (6/25/2009)
It can happen. Press releases do tend to require a lot of mental filtering.
Stan Wellaway 6:40PM (6/03/2009)
Congratulations to Tesla. Plenty of negative publicity prior to the vehicle first going into production -- and still some permanent complainers who will always do what they always do, and who cannot bring themselves to acknowledge success. But this is a worthwhile milestone - worthwhile enough to prove that the whole venture has been worthwhile. Well done Tesla.
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Zeph 6:55PM (6/03/2009)
Congratulations to Tesla. To put this into perspective, they are selling a sports car, a pretty quick one at that. They are selling it pretty cheap, when you consider it can outperform cars twice as expensive and that it's launching the company. And they have made 500 already?!
Consider this: McLaren only mad 64 road cars, iirc.
Bugatti will only make 500 Veyrons (both coupe and targa), they took longer to develop it and are still selling. Of course I know the pricing is a whole other level though.
There were only around 2200 Lamborghini Countachs made, ever.
Bentley, which on average costs about twice as much as a Tesla make 10 000 cars a year.
There is a huge market out there for Tesla, and I wish them God's speed. I want my next car to be electric. I just hope the powers that be don't trash this otherwise promising company, like they have done with so many promissing technology already. This should not be about money, this should be about sound technological choices.
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