After being ruling the United States as the green luxury cars, Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)‘s Model S car takes its road trip to London, U.K., adopting to the right-handed traffic. Bloomberg‘s Olivia Sterns took a spin in the right-handed Model S and assisted Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk’s, presentation of the car in London.
For the first time, Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) has launched its Model S with right steering wheel in London, where the company’s CEO, Elon Musk personally handed over the keys to the first five customers of the car. Among the five car owners is the author of the popular “Fifty Shades” book series, E L James. It’s always been the way at Tesla that CEO personally gives away the keys of the car during a new market launch. Other than that, the UK model of Tesla is priced at around £50,300 and comes packed with a 17 inch iPhone like display, Voice Controls and high strength batteries, which could easily cover shorter distances within the country, without the need to recharge. For longer distances, the company is planning to place a Supercharger DC charging network stations, like that in the home country.
“UK is likely to be one of our most significant markets somewhere between three, four or five, I would guess. So far advance orders are very strong in UK, if you order a car now you would receive in four months. We are also putting a lot of effort into super charger structure, we want to have Southern England covered by the end of this year and all of the Britishisles by the end of the next year. So the infrastructure buildup is quite significant, we will be spending several tens of millions of dollars over the next year on that,” Elon Musk said.
The launch of the Model S in London is an important milestone for the company, which has tasted a great success in the U.S. so far. The adaptability of the green car remained a dull affair in the U.K., in spite of robust financial incentives. One of the major reasons for its unattractiveness to U.K. consumers remained the unaddressed challenge of charging infrastructure. In this direction, the company already claims to be setting up charging stations that could easily recharge the car up to 50% of its battery strength within a time frame of 30 minutes.
Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) considers UK as one of the growing future markets for its electronic cars. In addition to this, by gaining ground in the right side driving versions of its car in the UK, the company is eying to get a foothold in other similar markets too, like India and South Africa.
Andor Capital Management, led by Daniel Benton, holds 1.25 million shares of Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), upping its stake by 450,000 shares on the quarter. The holding represents 13.81% of Daniel Benton’s equity portfolio. Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies, is another hedge fund that amasses 604,880 shares, worth $126.09 million.
Another hedge fund worth mentioning is Highfields Capital Management, run by Jonathon Jacobson, which holds 514,600 shares with a reported value of $107.27 million. The stake has been raised by 29% over the previous quarter.
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