On Thursday, May 1, 2008 between 6:00pm and midnight Tesla Motors celebrated the Grand Opening of their Flagship Tesla Store located at 11163 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA. Wow! Amazing cars, great Tesla Flagship Store Grand Opening, impressive test rides, beautiful women, great Tesla night!

I left for the EVent around 4:50pm and drove the approximate 30 miles into town on the 405 freeway which was amazingly uncrowded heading southbound. Northbound the freeway was crawling. I arrived around 5:20pm to a parking lot of traffic at the Wilshire Boulevard exit and along Santa Monica Boulevard where the store is located. It took about 20 minutes of roaming the side streets before I found an available parking spot as parking is very limited in this section of town and was a concern I had before heading out to this EVent. It is exactly this inability to quickly find parking and sitting on traffic jammed streets that makes an Electric (TMAX Class) MaxiScooter or a Vectrix Electric Robrady rMoto Superbike so enticing allowing you to ride directly to location at real freeway speeds and park anywhere close to your destination.

Having arrived a little early I attempted to take some pictures of the Tesla Store front from the median of traffic choked Santa Monica Boulevard along with pix of the two Tesla Roadsters (silver and red) parked up front within the store. There was a dark blue Tesla Roadster on one of the 3 service bay lifts in the adjacent maintenance bay which was decorated as you might a large living room. Without an internal combustion engine and associated engine oil, gasoline, and exhaust, maintenance on an electric vehicle is minimal and can be performed cleanly. As I browsed the poster size pictures of Tesla Roadster history along the back wall Jenny McCarthy appeared and was interviewed by the local news. Jenny recently placed an order for a Tesla Roadster of her very own as confirmed by the evening news segments archived below. Congratulations Jenny on adopting a green and very sporting EV (Electric Vehicle)!

Out back I found three additional Tesla Roadsters (red, light blue, black) setup for exciting demo rides which ran most of the night. While I was videoing one of the Tesla Roadsters take off with a prospective future Tesla owner, PhotoVoltaic Solar and EV advocate Paul Scott rode up on his red Vectrix Electric MaxiScooter! What a beautiful sight videoing this Zero Emissions plug-in electric MaxiScooter gliding effortlessly up to the store and parking without all the hassles of searching for a parking spot. Paul had just rode in along the traffic choked streets from Santa Monica in about 10 minutes where an automobile trip would have surely taken 30+ minutes not to mention the difficulty of finding a parking place in this congested part of town.

I met some really great people at the opening. Click here to see some additional pix of celebs that attended the opening. I even went on my very first demo ride of a Tesla Roadster finding it extremely quick and fast accelerating. It really is a rocketship ride while being quiet and pollution free (a great addition to a PhotoVoltaic Solar homeowner's garage)! Super congratulations go to Chelsea Sexton's husband, the esteemed EV1 Service expert Bob Sexton who just accepted the position of service manager at this Tesla Motors Flagship Store. He is obviously the most qualified and an excellent choice with all his EV1 servicing experience. There was a mini redcarpet entrance for the attendees and the very talented and fittingly electronic band Bitter:Sweet with beat-maker Kiran Shahani and singer Shana Halligan provided the music entertainment. Click here for a link to their music on iTunes. This EVent was by limited invite only and I had the honor of attending as a guest of Plug In America's president Linda Nicholes. Thank you Linda for setting aside one of your golden guest passes to what was a wonderful EV night!