Five Teslas parked Tuesday at the golf course belong to owners attending the Nov. 9 Rotary Club meeting where Tesla Owners Club of New Mexico founder Brian Dear was the featured speaker. Photo by Bonnie J. Gordon/ladilyost.com
By BONNIE J. GORDON
Los Alamos Daily Post
bjgordon@ladailypost.com
How Tesla came to New Mexico says a lot about Tesla and even more about a plucky group of Tesla owners, the Tesla Owners Club of New Mexico. Club founder Brian Dear explained how it happened at a Nov. 9 Rotary Club Meeting.
Tesla and New Mexico have quite a history, Dear said. Tesla signed off on a deal with state government to locate a factory in Albuquerque in 2007, but months went by with no progress, and in June 2008 Tesla announced it would build the factory in California. New Mexico also lost out to Nevada in an attempt to bring a factory to build Tesla batteries to the state.
The first Tesla Model S rolled off the assembly line in 2012 and Dear bought his first Tesla in 2013.
“I was living in California then and gas was $4.50 a gallon,” he said. “I waited until 18,000 cars had been sold and a lot of the kinks worked out before I bought the car.”
Fast forward to 2015, the year Dear moved to Santa Fe and founded the Tesla Owners Club of New Mexico.
“The only Tesla charger in New Mexico was in Gallup, Dear remembered. “We barely made it to Santa Fe. There were no service centers in New Mexico.”
New Mexicans were forced to rely on Tesla Rangers if something went wrong.The two Rangers who served New Mexico had a huge territory encompassing the entire intermountain west, from Montana to New Mexico and everything in between, Dear said.
“Owning a Tesla in New Mexico was high risk,” Dear said. “If you needed a service center, you had to tow the car to Denver and wait for them to fix it.”
Tesla couldn’t build a showroom/service facility in New Mexico because of a state law that prohibits auto manufacturers from selling directly to customers. Tesla does not franchise its sales, service and delivery centers as dealerships. They are owned by Tesla itself.
Then the Tesla Owners Club came up with an idea.
“We thought that the law could be sidestepped by building the service center on Pueblo land,” Dear said. “We floated the idea to Tesla and they were interested, but Tesla is secretive and we didn’t know when or if they would take up the idea. Tesla has a start-up mentality. They’re willing to take up new ideas, so we were hopeful.”
Tesla was negotiating with Nambé Pueblo behind the scenes and the former Nambé Falls Travel Center and Casino was chosen as the site. The Tesla Service Center opened its doors Sept. 9, 2021. It is located at 17730 US Hwy 285, near Buffalo Thunder Resort.
The service center operates like a car dealership, Dear said. Customers can take a test drive and order a car as well as having their Tesla serviced.
Most Teslas will still be sold via the Internet, but being able to take a test drive is a game changer, Dear said. Now future owners can try out a Tesla without driving to Denver.
“There’s no other car like it,” Dear said. “It feels like the future.”
Nimble startups can get ahead of giant companies by developing new ways of doing business. Such companies are called “disruptors” because they change everything about an industry.
“Tesla is the tip of a spear,” Dear said. “It’s the largest disruptor in history. At Tesla, things change daily, not over years.”
Dear believes Tesla is in a strong position as auto giants begin building electric cars because it has a 10-year jump on other companies and knows how to change direction on a dime.
“By 2040, the vast majority of cars will be electric,” Dear said. “Tesla is keeping its eyes on the prize of reducing carbon emissions. With 1 billion gas vehicles to be replaced, there’s plenty of room for more companies to produce electric vehicles.”