There’s a certain energy connected to a new car. This is very true of the Tesla Model S. The American vehicle maker caused quite a stir last week in Squamish by unveiling six Tesla Superchargers at Garibaldi Village.
The ribbon cutting at the mall on Thursday (July 17) attracted a bunch of people who were connected in some way to the project. There were lots of Tesla representatives on hand along with electricians and construction workers who did the heavy lifting to install the charging stations. A group of four people from Churchill International Property Corp. also attended the event, along with Mayor Rob Kirkham and Coun. Patricia Heintzman.
There may only be 30,000 Tesla Model S vehicles on the road around the world, but this company is playing a major role in changing how the world thinks about electric vehicles.
Tesla turned the charging units on a few days ahead of the opening ceremony. According to Tesla’s regional manager Troy Jones, someone from Missouri used the charger the first day it was available for use despite the fact his company didn’t do anything to inform anyone the chargers were ready for use. He added that 30 vehicle owners used the charging station in the days between the units going live and the official opening last week.
The car company didn’t do anything to promote the charging station ahead of the grand opening.
In fact, reporter Rebecca Aldous was left feeling last week like Tesla was trying to ensure word of the six new charging units at Garibaldi Village was kept quiet until the ribbon cutting. Her numerous attempts to interview someone about the units resulted in unreturned phone calls. Email messages she sent were ignored. An email message finally came from Tesla days out from the ribbon-cutting event. It simply pointed out that a grand opening event was planned.
Tesla owners are similar to Saturn owners when that car brand was launched in the 1990s. Saturn owners felt they were united through their cars and they organized events. They all showed up in their Saturns and celebrated their cars. General Motors tapped into that and used that social aspect of being a Saturn owner in its marketing of the brand. We’ve seen this kind of thing with Harley-Davidson for years and we saw it up close earlier this month with Harley owners converging on Squamish for a gathering.
There was a similar vibe at the Tesla event last week. Owners of the Model S rave about their cars and they like to blog about them, tweet their love for them and brag about them on Facebook.
“The Supercharger event for us here in Canada is a pretty big step because it’s the first,” Model S owner Ken Neave said at the event last week. “They have about 100 in the U.S. now.”
Neave drove up from North Vancouver with his wife and child to be part of the announcement at Garibaldi Village. A Model S owner from Massachusetts was at the event along with Neave and other owners from across Metro Vancouver.
The Model S is the only vehicle the car company is currently offering. The first model offered by Tesla was the Roadster. Only 2,500 of those vehicles were produced. The company plans to start offering a Model X in the fall of 2015. It is described as an electric SUV blended with the benefits of a minivan.
The attention the small car company generated for Squamish in a single day was just the kind of attention the community craves. News crews came up from Vancouver to cover the event, which happened on a perfect blue-sky day. The news coverage from the event was the type of publicity that simply can’t be purchased.
