Electric Car Lovers Already Lining Up For Tesla's Model S Sedan

From MercuryNews.com

Electric car lovers already lining up for Tesla's Model S sedan

By Patrick May

pmay@mercurynews.com
Posted: 07/07/2010 05:19:41 PM PDT
Updated: 07/07/2010 05:19:42 PM PDT

Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson was skimming the information packet for his Tesla Motors board of directors meeting last year when he hit pay dirt around page 50. Spotting details for the Model S sedan that the electric-car company had on the drawing boards, he knew he had to have one.

Better yet, he had to have the first one.

"The policy was that only after the car was officially on sale and the price had been set could anybody reserve a Model S,'' Jurvetson said this week, recalling that board of directors meeting in early 2009. "They were about to open the meeting, so without saying a word I whip out my wallet, where I always keep one check, fill it out for the full price of the car, and then toss it across the table. Everyone was stunned.''

Especially Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the guy across the table.

"Elon looked surprised,'' said Jurvetson. "Then he said, 'Well, I guess you get the first car.'''

Jurvetson had plopped himself at the head of a bustling queue of electric-car devotees all dying to be in one place: the bleeding edge. More than 2,200 people — starting with Musk in the Number Two spot — have lined up behind him, laying down deposits ($5,000 for a regular Model S that will go for $49,000, or $40,000 for an as-yet-unpriced super-loaded Signature Edition), and settling in for the long wait until the cars come out in 2012.

Reservation lines are also forming for the Nissan LEAF, where the $99
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deposit required is decidedly more blue-collar. And thousands more have put their names on the "Want List'' for the Chevy Volt. But Tesla's fans, many already driving the company's groundbreaking $109,000 Roadster, are a particularly fanatical bunch. And they're putting serious money down in the face of huge obstacles an unproven car company must overcome before its ground-breaking family sedan puts rubber to the road.

They do it for love of electric car, or hatred of Big Oil, or for a chance to be a roadway rock star. And sometimes, they do it against their better judgement.

"I admit it wasn't the most logical move to make,'' said software engineer Joey Mink (Number 691 in line). Deep down, he knows he should have used that $5,000 to upgrade the windows in his Northern Virginia house. But "we decided what the heck. Tesla said we could always get our deposit back, unless the company goes under, I guess. We've started putting money aside for the car. So for now, the home improvements will have to wait.''

The Model S queue is thick with tree-hugging gear-heads. Going electric means weaning the world off its oil addiction. And many of those in line call themselves EVangelists, already using their electric vehicles to spread the gospel every time they pull out of their driveway. Rob Stelling, a clinical lab technician from Napa, used to carry around a FAQ flyer to hand to folks who'd stop to ask him about his electric Toyota RAV4.

Stelling (Number 81 on the Signature Edition list) used the money he made from selling the Toyota to a "St. Louis investment company bigwig'' to reserve his slice of heaven. "The day they started selling the Model S, we walked into the Menlo Park store at 10 a.m. with $40,000 cash in my wife's purse,'' he said. "It was in large packs of $100 bills. That got their attention.''

So why not just buy a Regular Model S?

"Because it's a show-off car and I'm a show-off,'' says Stelling. "I'll have people drooling over my Model S Signature Edition!''

For others wait-listed, that oil addiction has been replaced by an obsession with an EV ride Tesla fans use words like "sweet'' and "sexy'' to describe. "A spin around the block in the Roadster was the kicker for me,'' says Mink. "It was like nothing I'd ever experienced. The only noise the car made was this space-shuttly whine. It was screaming, but silently.''

Retired flight-school manager Gabrielle Adelman and her husband Kenneth (Number 48) have already owned or leased seven EVs, though they've now downsized to five at their Santa Cruz Mountains outpost. Their carbon-footprint-shrinking campaign prompted them to get into the queue early.

Five was not enough? "We wanted a sedan,'' said Gabrielle, "that you could take two or more people in, that had great range, and a trunk, not a mail slot like our Roadster.''

And like many of their fellow reservation-holders, the Adelmans had the financial footing — thanks to selling software startups to Cisco Systems and Nokia — to whip out their checkbook nearly as quickly as Jurvetson had.

"We have the means,'' said Gabrielle, "to support things we believe in, and we hope to be a tiny part of a huge crowd of people who embrace the electric car. It's fun when you have one of these and everyone stares, but I hope to see the day when the EV doesn't stand out anymore in a Safeway parking lot.''

Tesla hopes to eventually crank out 20,000 Model S sedans each year at NUMMI, the former Toyota-GM plant in Fremont that Tesla bought in May. News of that purchase, along with the excitement generated by Tesla's IPO last month, has emboldened fans like Evan Fusco. The 43-year-old emergency-room doctor in Springfield, Missouri, says he's the only guy for hundreds of miles to have reserved a Model S — "The next closest reservation holder I'm aware of is four hours away in Memphis.''

But with the help of Model S fan sites and forums online, he's never lonely.

"Being a part of this subculture is great,'' Fusco said the other day as he and his son drove their Prius through rural Missouri to see a Rush concert in Kansas City. "We support each other because we all believe in the same thing — the need to end our dependence on fossil fuels.''

So with fingers crossed, the waiting game continues. Will the Model S really get built? And even if it does, what will that Signature Edition cost when it does?

"No one knows exactly what it'll sell for,'' says Stelling. "So I've put down $40,000 on a car I've never seen and hasn't been built yet, and I don't even know what the price will turn out to be, and all this from a largely untested company.

"Am I crazy? Yes. But somehow,'' he says, "this still makes sense to me.''