What are you anticipating in terms of sales volumes for Europe?

Our hope for Europe is that we sell a comparable number of cars to America, and we expect to increase our activities in Europe quite a bit. One of the things we’re in the process of doing is expanding our final assembly operations in the Netherlands, and we also expect to most likely establish an R&D centre in the UK next year or the year after.

Then we’re likely to establish a factory, probably on the Continent first, and in the future probably in the UK. It really depends on the volume of cars we’re able to sell. Beyond final assembly,once we anticipate our production will be over half a million cars per year it makes sense to have a factory in Europe and in China.

Do you ever plan to monetise the Supercharger network?

It doesn’t cost that much to charge a car, so we can either be chintzy and charge people a few pounds or we can charge them nothing and build it into the cost of the car. So we’d rather not have you get your wallets out for some small amount of money every time, we feel confident that we can maintain the cost of Superchargers over time.

Also we want to add solar power and stationary battery packs, so once you factor in the capital cost once you have the solar power to charge the cars every year you’re really talking about maintenance costs which are very small. Usually we don’t pay any rent, in some cases we’ve actually been paid to have a Supercharger there, and electricity costs are low to zero once you have solar panels and stationary battery packs.

It’s just the capital costs and ongoing maintenance.

Are other manufacturers able to use the network?

The intent of the Supercharger network is not to create a walled garden – any other manufacturer that’s interested to use it we will accommodate. They need to be able to accept the power level of the Superchargers, which is currently 135kW and rising, and they have to agree with the business model which is we don’t charge people on a per-charge basis. They just need to contribute to the capital cost proportional to their vehicles’ usage of the network.

When will other models arrive in Europe?

The Model X will hopefully start deliveries in California in the second quarter next year, then right hand drive at the end of next year. Our third gen car will be about €25,000, but its true cost is less than that because you don’t have to pay for petrol, which is expensive and there will be some Government support, so it might be comparable to a €15 –20,000 car. We’re aiming for three years.

We want to democratise electric cars and make them viable, but at the moment they’re more expensive than we would like.