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Tesla, the electric car darling, is determined to re-engineer not just the concept and workings of the car, but also the buying experience.

They openly admit to modeling their new dealerships on Apple and Starbucks and good restaurants where you can see the chef working.

Here’s what they plan to do:

-    The overall concept is Tesla dealerships as VIP Lounges
-    The service area will be front and center, not out the back. Since the technology is clean, visitors will be able to see the techs working on the cars
-    Techs are company shareholders and are assigned by name to customers
-    Install comfortable lounge areas, with free Wi-Fi, coffee, snacks and flat screens
-    No salespeople, just assistants to help with information and assist the purchase, rather than “sell” it

Tesla's stores will open in Los Angeles and Bay Area stores in the fourth quarter, followed by New York, Chicago, and Miami in the first quarter of 2008.

However, the designers have yet to be chosen and the company is open to suggestions and ideas from customers and prospects.

There’s nothing extremely radical in this "brief". Most luxury dealerships are already doing most of this, the big difference is putting the tech/service center and the technicians front and center, this will create a new type of experience. Hopefully, the design companies pitching this project will come up with ideas that stretch the "brief" a little bit.

Something obvious Tesla has to do is to make sure these dealerships are the “greenest” they can possibly be, their customers will expect nothing less.

Via Autoblog
The New Yorker reports on "the daily commute", showing that it's taking up more and more of our time and turning some of us into unhappy loners.

"Roughly one out of every six American workers commutes more than forty-five minutes, each way. People travel between counties the way they used to travel between neighborhoods. The number of commuters who travel ninety minutes or more each way—known to the Census Bureau as “extreme commuters”—has reached 3.5 million, almost double the number in 1990. They’re the fastest-growing category, the vanguard in a land of stagnant wages, low interest rates, and ever-radiating sprawl. They’re the talk-radio listeners, billboard glimpsers, gas guzzlers, and swing voters, and they don’t—can’t—watch the evening news. Some take on long commutes by choice, and some out of necessity, although the difference between one and the other can be hard to discern. A commute is a distillation of a life’s main ingredients, a product of fundamental values and choices. And time is the vital currency: how much of it you spend—and how you spend it—reveals a great deal about how much you think it is worth."