Tesla is unique amongst motor manufacturers in that they wholly own their sales centres (which are more like a shop/store than they are a car dealership). Sales staff are not commissioned on the sale of a car but are rewarded on the customer experience they provide.
You can either order your Tesla online at teslamotors.com or visit one of the Tesla Sales Centres.
Through the use of crowdsourced information (thank you to those on the Tesla Motors Forum for the information) we have fairly accurately estimated timescales for each stage of the process to delivery of your new car, although you should be aware that the dashboard status updates seem to have a surprising amount of manual input so sometimes do not reflect the actual status. If in doubt, we found that Tesla Delivery Specialists (you will be allocated one within the first 30 days of ordering your car) are always happy to clarify your current status.
| Stage (from) | Stage (to) | Average days elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Order confirmed | Sourcing parts | 14 |
| Sourcing parts | VIN assigned | 30 |
| VIN assigned | Queued for production | 28 |
| Queued for production | In production | 49 |
| In production | In transit | 8 |
| In transit | Delivery date confirmed | 23 |
| Delivery date confirmed | Prep for pickup | 11 |
| Prep for pickup | Delivered | 7 |
| Average total days elapsed | 170 | |
Noteworthy information about Delivery Timescales and process
- You can pay your deposit by credit card or bank transfer
- If you manually confirm the specification of your car it accelerates delivery (by however many days ahead of the 2 week confirmation period you manually confirm the spec)
- When your vehicle configuration has been sent for production the deposit becomes non refundable
- You can change the order by calling or e-mailing your Delivery Specialist to just before your car goes into production
- Tesla are quite flexible on delivery arrangements and can be persuaded to deliver on a Sunday too
- The first UK P85D deliveries have been pushed back from June to August 2015 due to availability issues with a RHD specific part (this would have significantly skewed the later stages of the delivery process and so P85D deliveries have been deliberately excluded from the calculation of averages)