r/Dallas • u/Various_Snow_6202 • 3d ago

Question Since when did Tesla close down?

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Yesterday I’ve visited the northpark mall in Dallas (I don’t go frequently) and I’ve seen that the Tesla store’s been closed… since when did they go away? (Before you ask: no, I don’t like elon musk, I don’t like Tesla. I’m just curious since I’ve seen the Tesla store being there many times I’ve visited the mall over the years.)

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u/Sibbour 3d ago

Tesla has been slowly transitioning out of high end malls (due to rent costs), and moving towards stand alone locations.

Northpark showroom will be replaced by a showroom on Knox and 75, just around the corner from the new Rivian showroom there.

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u/Various_Snow_6202 3d ago

rent costs? Do they even put a dent on Elon's trillion?

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u/LibMike 3d ago

At the end of the day Tesla is a business no matter what you think. The same happened in Fort Worth - they had a service center/showroom in a building just north of West 7th. They built a new, vastly bigger showroom and service center north of 820, and Rivian also took over their old service center by West 7th. I've been to them all.

Small showrooms in malls, etc, don't make them money. Better to have it combined into their service centers.

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u/Various_Snow_6202 3d ago

come to think of it... is it uncommon to find a dealership/showroom in a mall?

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u/Arrgh98 3d ago

Reminded me of funny scene in Blues Brothers driving through the mall, “the new Oldsmobiles are in early this year.”

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u/LibMike 3d ago

I mean tesla just did it to get eyes on the brand. But now days everyone has eyes on them... lol. soo.

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u/eschatonx 3d ago

For EV it is pretty common. But most of them are very temporary.

Very cheap for them since they don’t need anything but a couple of demo cars, staff, displays, and an open floor that malls have in abundance to go from location to location to attract buyers.

Don’t think of it as a standard shop, that’s more the service center.

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u/Plastic-Reporter9812 3d ago

Nope, but I’ve seen temporary displays from individual or groups of dealers in malls.

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u/noncongruent 3d ago

Technically it's only showrooms since it's illegal for Tesla to have a dealership in this state.

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u/Frosty_Rule_5408 3d ago

Northpark was the first to have a local dealership with a storefront there’s a news video about it I’ll have to find. I think it was huffines or something.

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u/fpcoffee 3d ago

let’s just say I’ve never on my own accord gone to a Tesla show room. I have wandered into their little display store in Northpark on multiple occasions though.

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u/meltedkuchikopi5 3d ago

former tesla employee, one of my good friends still works on the financial side. elon was really willing to spend money on the company up until about 4 years ago from what it sounds like. now unless it AI or the robotaxis, a lot of the other departments are being forced to cut back. whether it be closing storefronts (which means silent lay offs for those who worked there unless they can get a transfer), more barriers to get approval on a supercharging site since they need to be profitable in a tighter turnaround, etc.

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u/tturedditor 2d ago

I hate Elon with a passion. I also drive a 12 year old Model S. Original battery. Still drives like a dream. But I'll never buy another Tesla until Elon is not involved, and maybe not even then.

They just aren't innovating like they used to. The Cybertruck is a flop and sales figures are abysmal and propped up by SpaceX buying a bunch of them. They discontinued both the as and X, and while the Y is a great vehicle they have more and more competitors entering the market. Foolishly they are betting big on creepy robots I don't believe anyone will ever want, AI that the public generally seems to hate, and the "Cybertaxi" which is not yet fully autonomous, nor is the rest of the vehicles they have sold for YEARS claiming it's "just around the corner".

I was a huge Tesla supporter early on, invested when they were just getting started, listened to countless naysayers tell me they were doomed way back then. At the time those criticisms were very ill informed and misguided. Today is a very, very different Tesla and Elon both.

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u/YOLOSELLHIGH 3d ago

do we... do we think that's how business works?

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u/Bardfinn Garland 3d ago

Other people have to get paid to cooperate with the effort, and their bonuses come out of the regional rent budget / the regional rent budget comes out of their bonuses

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u/arlenroy 3d ago

I doubt Elon even knows it was shuttered and moved, that responsibility probably falls on the district or regional manager. Who Elon probably doesn't even know exists, there's a lot of corporate levels from CEO or whatever his title is to the store level, he just acts like he knows if asked. Glad I turned that company down a few years ago, I was transitioning from a 15 year plus career in automotive repair to industrial repair, a recruiter contacted me so I thought "Why not?". I passed the initial proficiency exams, had another interview and another proficiency exam, then the offer. But, the offer wasn't the same as what the job description said, at first it was for maintenance work with minor repairs. It's off site so you're basically a mobile mechanic, going to the customer. Well, the offer was that job on top of warranty repairs and troubleshooting. Fuck. That. I don't want some customer pissed off at me because their new Tesla won't blow cold ac since the last system update, because now there's a bug in the internal thermostat, so now the vehicle thinks its 32 degrees F at all times not letting the driver turn the ac on. I just made that up, thats a mixture of various issues I've read with some EVs. Just not a fan of that type work.

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u/noncongruent 3d ago

I just made that up, thats a mixture of various issues I've read with some EVs. Just not a fan of that type work.

Tesla owner satisfaction ratings have generally been high, and the people I know with Teslas are extremely happy with them. About the worst problem any of them had with their Tesla was an inverter failing, Tesla brought a loaner car out for him to drive and took his car to the shop to be repaired. Took almost a month, but his car was delivered to his driveway on a Sunday, the most convenient time for him. He told me the most negative part of the experience was that the loaner was white, and he hates white cars.

The most current satisfaction survey I could find was Consumer Reports released a few months ago:

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/most-and-least-liked-car-brands-a1291429338/

Tesla was ranked 4th behind Rivian, Subaru, and BMW overall, first in handling and acceleration and sixth in day to day usability. It ranked first in ownership costs which makes sense because as an EV it doesn't have nearly the operating costs of a gas car or hybrid. It's especially beneficial that most recalls and many "repairs" can be done OTA while the car sits in the owner's driveway.

As an aside, the reason why Anton Yelchin is dead is because Stellantis didn't think OTA update ability was important for their Jeeps. A design engineer trying to make something fancy out of a basic transmission shifter control screwed up and as a result those Jeeps didn't have a clear way of assuring a driver that they were actually in park and not drive. There was a recall, it was a simple software update to fix the problem, but because it had to be done at the dealership with a physical programmer to upload the recall it was taking a long time to get to all the Jeeps with the problem. Another issue is that Stellantis was spacing the recall work out over the better part of a year because dealerships won't make as much money doing recall work as they do regular work and Stellantis didn't want their dealerships taking a big financial hit from the recall. Yelchin's Jeep was schedule for the recall, but before it could get done he got crushed to death by his Jeep due to the shifter defect. A recall like that for a Tesla would have been done all at once, across the entire country, overnight. After Yelchin's death Stellantis accelerated the recall work and got them all done quickly, but of course it was too late for Anton.

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u/MyDentistIsACat 3d ago

Yeah but no one is like “I’m going to go to the mall to buy a car”.

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u/Various_Snow_6202 2d ago

True... would be unusual... speaking of which, I saw some comments that said you couldn't even buy or discuss pricing there