Goodbye, Haverty’s Furniture store. Hello, Tesla showroom just south of the Pavilion in Fayetteville.
The hottest car company in the world will likely have a showroom for its popular electric vehicles under construction later this year on Ga. Highway 85 North if — as expected — the Fayetteville City Council approves a rezoning this coming Thursday.
A showroom, not a dealership, because Tesla owns all its showrooms and has no franchised dealerships. You buy the vehicle directly from the company via the internet.
Right now, Tesla has more than 170 galleries and showrooms around the U.S., 438 worldwide. Most of its vehicles are actually purchased online. So to try out a Tesla, you schedule an appointment, go to a showroom like the one soon to be in Fayetteville and take a half-hour-long test-drive.
Georgia currently is home to a half-dozen showrooms in the north Atlanta metro area and one in Savannah, meaning the Fayetteville showroom will be among the first on Atlanta’s southside. In addition there are multiple Tesla-provided charging stations, including several in Fayette and Coweta counties, where you can park and plug in.
The proposed site in Fayetteville is a total of 9.64 acres, with part of that occupied by the 65,000 square-foot building housing Haverty’s Furniture. The city report says Haverty’s is closing that store later this year and the property will be vacant.
If all goes as expected Thursday evening, Fayetteville — and Fayette County, as well — will soon have its second new car showroom. The first was a Ford dealership now in business for more than 40 years at its longtime location on North Glynn Street.
By the way, the cheapest Tesla you can buy now is the Model 3, starting at $42,690, according to the Tesla website. On a full charge, you’ll get 334 miles plus zero to 60 in 4.2 seconds. Unlike the original Ford Model T — which according to Henry Ford came in any color you wanted, as long as it was black — Tesla offers five colors, which includes solid black and solid white.
EV lithium batteries are environmentally unsound. The strip mining and processing is horrible, using large amounts of water. The batteries cannot be recycled like the older type of batteries. China owns a lot of the lithium mines and produces most of the batteries. We do not. This makes us less energy independent. There are warehouses full of used lithium batteries, and we sell most back to China (who has a bad record on environmental issues…). China does not recycle these either.
This makes us less energy independent. We have 100 years of natural gas in this country and should concentrate on using it (Amazon, Post Office buses use natural gas powered vehicles). Its clean fuel. Lithium batteries loose power even jut sitting and hot/cold weather affects the range immensely. The power to charge EV’s come from….power plants using coal, natural gas or nuclear. To say we are going to get rid of these fuels is nonsense. Even Musk says we need to pump more oil. And fast charging stations are said to degrade batteries even further..but yet, that’s the only way you can make it on a long trip.
With that said, I admire Elon Musk for developing the EV and letting people decide if they want one or not. They even independently have installed recharge stations across the US. That’s far different than the government forcing EV on people and using taxpayer funds to install recharging stations.
Until better batteries can be made HERE (solid state batteries will use far less lithium), and until we use nuclear or natural gas to power EV’s (sun and solar will not do once you get all these EV’s on the road)….EV’s should not be forced on people. BTW…is every home, apartment and business now going to have to have a charging station..millions of these? Wouldn’t a centrally located fueling station be better….aka a GAS/NATURAL GAS station?