SYDNEY’S busy Martin Place will soon host its first “car dealership” as Tesla rolls out more company-owned car retail stores in a major push to put its hugely popular electric vehicles in front of as many adopters as it can.

The CBD showroom, to open in the third quarter of this year, becomes Tesla’s fifth permanent outlet and third stand alone store and begins a wave of showroom expansions for the car maker.

This will be Tesla’s first stand-alone Sydney store and will feature over two levels to house display vehicles, a design studio and merchandise section.

It will also allow prospective buyers to test drive Tesla’s sole sedan model, the Model S, using demonstration vehicles housed in the building’s underground carpark.

Tesla marketing and communications manager Heath Walker told GoAutoNews Premium that the CBD address of the next Tesla store places the company in its preferred location of high-volume traffic zones.

“We don’t hold stock so we don’t need a large area to show our products,” he said.

“We work best by having our sales locations in high foot-traffic areas and for us, shopping centres and centre city sites work best.”

Mr Walker said more outlets were planned and would be progressively rolled out across the country.

The expansion will be triggered by the arrival of the Tesla Model X, the all-electric SUV expected in Australia in the fourth quarter of this year.

Mr Walker said reservations were being held for the Model X but said it wasn’t Tesla policy to release numbers.

The same response was given for the Model 3 reservations, with no official numbers of Australians who have paid a holding fee of $1500 for the budget-priced electric car expected here in 2018.

“Production (of the Model 3) starts in 2017 and will initially be left-hand drive for North American customers,” Mr Walker said. “The right-hand-drive models will be the last off the production line, so we would be looking at some time in 2018.”

Tesla has two permanent retail displays at Chadstone shopping centre in Melbourne’s east and the Carindale shopping centre in Brisbane’s south-east. It also has a service centre and store in St Leonards on Sydney’s North Shore and a head office and outlet on Church Street in the inner Melbourne suburb of Richmond.

By Neil Dowling