words and pictures by Brian Solis

On July 19th, Tesla Motors, Silicon Valley’s first car company, hosted a grand opening party for its brand new flagship dealership in Menlo Park, CA.

I was invited to attend the event and was more than happy to finally shoot the now famous Roadster! The company took over a vacant Silicon Valley GMC car lot near Palo Alto and transformed it into something unique and wonderful. The party, which boasted 10-15 valets, a red carpet, furniture constructed of cargo boxes and tires (and a nice outdoor setting), an ice sculpture vodka bar, and Tesla Roadsters as decorum, also hosted Silicon Valley VIPs in its service hanger that made you forget you were actually in a “shop.”

The Roadster is special because it is…

100% electric.

$109,000.

a rocket, capable of hitting 0-60 in 3.9 seconds.

inexpensive at 2-cents per mile.

able to travel up to 220 miles per charge.

There’s a year waiting list for these bad boys and if you’re one of the lucky elite, you’ll start receiving your car any day now. I even saw the cars belonging to Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story:

Prototype (left), Wood mock-up (right)

Elon Musk, Tesla Chairman

Daryl Siry of Tesla

For more pictures from the Tesla Menlo Park launch, please visit my album on Flickr.

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UPDATE: GigaOm’s Earth2Tech’s event coverage is here.