Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors will open its newest showroom this week in Denmark’s largest city.
Tesla’s 13th worldwide store is at Bredgade 35, in the heart of Copenhagen, recognized internationally as one of the world’s most environmentally friendly places. Copenhagen, which hosted the most recent UN Conference on Climate Change, generates a growing percentage of its grid’s energy from the famous offshore wind farm at Middelgrunden. The city is working to reduce CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2015.
“People in Denmark believe in social responsibility, and the Tesla Roadster is the only electric vehicle that combines a world-class sports car with their values of environmental stewardship,” said Cristiano Carlutti, Tesla’s Vice President for European Sales and Operations. “We are thrilled that customers in Denmark and throughout Scandinavia have embraced not only the Roadster but the core business philosophy of Tesla Motors.”
The US Ambassador to Denmark, Laurie S. Fulton, will kick off festivities at 2 p.m. July 1. Tesla is hosting a media open house from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., including test drives, executive interviews and surprise guests. An invitation-only VIP gala will follow in the evening, and the store will be open for prospective customers to test-drive the Roadster throughout the weekend.
The zero-emission Roadster does not pay traditional vehicle taxes in Denmark. By contrast, people who buy conventional petroleum-burning cars pay up to 180 percent car tax on top of the manufacturers’ sales price. Tax waivers combined with expensive gasoline prices mean that the Tesla Roadster is a tremendous value relative to comparable cars in Denmark.
Tesla’s founding goal is to produce energy-efficient cars for mass-market, mainstream consumers. Tesla deliberately started with the Roadster, a premium sports car aimed at affluent “thought leaders,” in order to establish a proof of technology and shatter the prevailing stereotype that electric vehicles are underpowered an unfashionable. Based in California’s Silicon Valley, Tesla has already been delivered more than 1,000 cars in at least 25 countries, and has forged strategic alliances with Daimler and Toyota to produce zero-emission cars.
The Roadster accelerates faster than other sports car in its price class yet has zero tailpipe emissions. It consumes no petroleum and plugs into conventional sockets – at owners’ garages or offices, hotels, parking decks or at a growing number of charging stations throughout Scandinavia. It’s the only sports car that can be fully or partially recharged by renewable energy – and several regional customers charge on 100 percent solar power from their photovoltaic panels or wind power from turbines.
