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Mystery shoppers love Infiniti, hate Tesla

Infiniti, followed by Lexus tied with Mercedes-Benz took the top two spots for best sales experience according to mystery shoppers from the latest Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index, while EV manufacturer Tesla recorded the lowest overall score. Not surprisingly, premium brands dominated the top ranks. Including the three already mentioned, luxury brands occupied seven of the top ten spots and included Audi, BMW, Porsche, and the only American brand to crack the upper echelon, Cadillac. Toyota, Volkswagen, and Nissan rounded out the first ten positions. The news for domestic automakers isn't good. Aside from Caddy, the only other star-spangled automaker to score above the industry average is Chrysler. The rest of FCA, most of GM, and all of Ford fell below the line. But Pied Piper's mystery shoppers handed Tesla the biggest walloping – the company is ten full points below the next lowest brand, Volvo, and its score of 86 is 17 below the average of 103. It's baffling, considering the company's touted direct-sales model. "Tesla leaves me scratching my head," Fred O'Hagan, Pied Piper's president and CEO, told Wards Auto. "They own all of their stores, so you would think each one would be doing the same thing. But they're not. Tesla is consistent in its inconsistencies." O'Hagan added that there's a "huge variation" in Tesla's store-to-store effectiveness, and that in some cases, shoppers found showroom workers that acted more like "museum curators," Wards Auto reports. It might be popular to call Tesla the Apple of the car world, but based on Pied Piper's work, the brand has a long way to go to emulate the uniform shopping experience of an Apple Store. The news might be bad for Tesla, but even for the brands that scored below average, there's cause for celebration. Only Tesla and Mini lost points in this year's rankings, and only Mercedes and Lincoln held steady. Every other brand, including Infiniti, which topped the index for the first time, gained at least one point. The biggest improvements belong to Porsche, Land Rover, and Mitsubishi, which all jumped five points. Pied Piper's annual Prospect Satisfaction Index uses mystery shoppers – over 6,100 this year – from across the country to assess dealers and generate rankings from over 50 individual factors. News Source: Pied Piper via WardsAuto Green Audi BMW Cadillac Chrysler Infiniti Lexus Mercedes-Benz Nissan Tesla Toyota Car Buying Car Dealers study

Tesla not bought with Bitcoin currency after all?

The story we posted about a dealership accepting Bitcoins as payment for a Tesla Model S is reportedly only partially true. Lamborghini Newport Beach instead used BitPay to exchange the electronic currency for US dollars before completing the sale, according to "Squawk on the Street" on CNBC.
"We found out that by using a little program that Bitcoin uses, which is actually BitPay, we would have received US dollars," Pietro Frigerio, general manager of the dealership, says in the interview. "It's like if you come into the dealership and you want to buy a Lamborghini using gold bars, we would not accept it. So you'd go out, exchange it, and you'd come back to us. That was how it worked [with the Tesla and the Bitcoins]."
Frigerio says that the dealership doesn't accept Bitcoin as a currency and only accepts US dollars as payment for its vehicles. That said, we wouldn't be surprised if using BitPay to turn Bitcoins into US dollars for the used Model S purchase was actually easier than going through a more traditional financial establishment. Head over to CNBC to check out the "Squawk on the Street" interview with more details.

Does Tesla really have 12,000 Model X preorders?

The Tesla Model X is not due until the end of the year, but the preorders apparently continue to rush in. While there has been no official statement - we've asked, but Tesla declined to comment - a set of crowdsourced numbers over at the Tesla Motors Club (TMC) adds up to over 12,00 people excitedly awaiting a new EV. Since Tesla isn't talking, we'll say 12,000 is a reasonable guess. TMC used reservation numbers submitted by people in the queue to come up with 12,000. That number breaks down to 9,900 Model X orders from the US (around 1,350 of them the Signature Series), another 1,916 (202) from Europe and 384 (49) from Canada. Throw in an expected 764 (with an unknown number of Signature models) from China, and you get to a solid batch of preorders for the upcoming all-electric, AWD-only Model X. Over 13,000, in fact. TMC acknowledges that this number is higher than the expected real number of preorders because anyone who upgraded from the standard production version to a signature model gets counted twice in the system that TMC is using, and cancellations are not factored in. We would not be surprised in the least if there are already over 10,000 people lined up for a Model X. It will be the first EV of its size on the market (aside from the Toyota RAV4 EV, which is only available in limited numbers) and it carries the Tesla cache. After all, Tesla sold over 20,000 Model S EVs in the US last year, so we know the company can make a popular EV. Lastly, Tesla got $40 million worth of preorders - that is, around 500 units - in the first four days that the CUV was available for deposits back in 2012. Since Tesla isn't talking, we'll say 12,000 is a reasonable guess.