Archive for the 'On the Road' Category

From the Factory to Our Garage Published on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 in Company, On the Road.

In October, Stephen Casner and his wife Karen toured the Lotus factory in England as their Roadster rolled off the assembly line. They took delivery at the Menlo Park store three weeks later. Stephen, who has written several other blogs about Tesla, describes the tour and his first impressions with the car. Read more…

Flying the Glider: Roadster Owner Ken Jacobs Tours Assembly Plant and Test Track Published on Friday, July 18th, 2008 in Performance, Company, On the Road.

Ken Jacobs was one of the first employees at the relational database pioneer Oracle Corporation. He and his wife Margaret are thrilled to be early adopters and advocates for the pioneering Tesla, the car and the company.

Handing Over the Keys VI: Dr. Rob Wilder Published on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 in On the Road.

Dr. Rob Wilder is Manager of the WilderHill Clean Energy Index, the first Index on Wall Street for renewable energy, better energy efficiency, and zero-carbon solutions. He was previously on faculty at U.C. Santa Barbara, and University of Massachusetts; he has been a AAAS/EPA Fellow in Environmental Science & Technology, Fulbright Fellow, and National Academy of Sciences Young Investigator. Read more…

Handing Over the Keys IV: Michael ‘Flea’ Balzary Published on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 in Company, On the Road.

Michael “Flea” Balzary likes to break new ground. With band mates Red Hot Chili Peppers, he pioneered funk metal, a sound that marries aspects of funk and hip-hop with traditional rock. He applied the same innovative spirit to his ride and now holds a reservation for a 2008 model year Tesla Roadster. In October, as part of our ongoing customer drive program, Michael got behind the wheel of our prototype Tesla Roadster. What follows is his feedback from the driving experience. As always, customer drive opinions are unedited by Tesla Motors. Read more…

Handing Over the Keys III Published on Monday, October 15th, 2007 in Performance, Company, On the Road.

A critical part of the sales, marketing, and service function at Tesla Motors is to help inform product development and engineering decisions based on a customer perspective, a part of what we call “product marketing.” When validation prototype 10 (VP10) was built, one of the things we planned to use it for was to put a lot of miles on the car and provide marketing feedback to engineering teams for final refinements or validation. We recently scheduled rides with some of our customers to expand the feedback loop and asked them to share their driving experiences publicly on this blog. Customer opinions are unedited, save for my commentary in [brackets]. This week we present three perspectives from our latest testers. Find previous customer posts here.

Handing Over the Keys II Published on Monday, September 24th, 2007 in Uncategorized, Performance, On the Road.

A critical part of the sales, marketing, and service function at Tesla Motors is to help inform product development and engineering decisions based on a customer perspective, a part of what we call “product marketing.” When validation prototype 10 (VP10) was built, one of the things we planned to use it for was to put a lot of miles on the car and provide marketing feedback to engineering teams for final refinements or validation. We recently scheduled rides with some of our customers to expand the feedback loop and asked them to share their driving experiences publicly on this blog. The write-ups are unedited, save for my commentary in [brackets]. The first three can be found here. Read on for two new perspectives. Read more…

Handing Over the Keys Published on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 in Performance, On the Road.

A critical part of the sales, marketing, and service function at Tesla Motors is to help inform product development and engineering decisions based on a customer perspective, a part of what we call “product marketing.” Read more…