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Tour a Tesla showroom, get inside Model S on Google Street View

Even in the US states (like Texas) where Tesla is not able to sell cars at one of its stores, residents can now visit a virtual EV sales space. Thanks to Google Street View and the company's high-tech cameras, a digital visit to a Tesla store in Seattle on Westlake Avenue is now possible by clicking here. A slightly misshapen exterior view is available here. Tesla Tweeted its excitement about the virtual visitor's pass – fitting for a company that has to sell some of its vehicles online – and so we spent some time clicking around in the studio. It's so immersive we almost wanted to knock on the restroom doors and touch the exposed battery pack "skateboard" in the back room. Go ahead and tour the showroom in Street View here, and see if you can figure out how to climb inside one of the Model S EVs parked inside (it's possible). We've put together a gallery of screen grabs of our favorite odd-looking and stretched images from the store as well as a fun example of how this just doesn't quite compare with being there (day turns to night instantly, if you click just right around the red Model S). Still, it's fun. If you'd like to visit another plug-in vehicle in a dealership, check out this Chevy Volt at Bachman Chevrolet. Or, why not, the Nissan Engine Museum here. Anyone got other, similar options?

Tesla strikes back against Lemon Law King over Model S dispute [UPDATE]

*UPDATE: We have now also received a statement from the Model S owner in question, which has been added below. When we asked Tesla Motors for a statement on the lawsuit filed by the "King of Lemon Laws" the other day, the company told us that it does not comment on pending litigation. Fair enough. That's a standard response. But the company has since felt the need to comment on the issue using its own company blog. In a post called "When Life Gives You Lemons...," the Tesla Motors Team called lawyer Vince Megna (indirectly) an "opportunistic lawyer" and basically called him a liar. To wit: "... there are factual inaccuracies in the lawyer's story." Tesla says that the three claimed incidents when the Model S owner in question asked the automaker to buy the car back did not happen (Tesla acknowledges it happening once). And then the company basically says the owner was breaking his car on purpose: ... the car's fuse blew on three occasions. Each time, our engineers explored all possible explanations and were never able to find anything wrong with the car. Still, just to be sure, we replaced several parts that could have been related to the alleged problem – all at no expense to the customer. When the fuse kept blowing despite the new parts, and faced with no diagnosis showing anything wrong with the car, the engineers were moved to consider the possibility that the fuse had been tampered with. After investigating, they determined that the car's front trunk had been opened immediately before the fuse failure on each of the three occasions. (The fuse is accessed through the front trunk.) Ultimately, Tesla service applied non-tamper tape to the fuse switch. From that point on, the fuse performed flawlessly. We've got the entire response below, along with Megna's response to Tesla's statement. The key line: "There are companies, great companies run by Billionaires, that force consumers to give up their Freedom of Speech and Right to Trial by Jury just for the opportunity to buy an electric car." You can watch Megna's original video introducing the world to this case here. When Life Gives You Lemons... By The Tesla Motors Team April 9, 2014 We were taken by surprise by a lemon law claim recently filed against Tesla by a Wisconsin lawyer, describing himself as the "Lemon Law King", who says that we ignored his client's three demands for a buy-back after alleged problems with a Model S.

This map shows where Tesla can and can't sell cars

The fine folks at Mojo Motors recently put together a US map showing where the Tesla Model S electric vehicles can and can't be legally sold. They marked the "legal" states in blue, "illegal" states in red and "in legislation" states in that proverbial gray area. And darn if that colorful map didn't match up pretty well with a political-party map of the country. 24 states are technically Tesla-ready. Of the 50 US states, 24 states are technically Tesla-ready, in addition to Washington, DC. And while some (California, New York, Massachusetts and Washington State) were pretty obvious, others (Mississippi and Georgia, for example) surprised us a little. We were also interested to see that Arizona and West Virginia were marked as "in legislation" but Ohio and New Jersey were not, given the fights there. In any case, Texas is red. Bright red. Tesla Supercharger locations are also marked, but Tesla's constantly updated map is likely a better source for that info after a few weeks have passed. If you'd like to dig into the nitty gritty of the various dealer franchise laws, then use the same source that Mojo Motors' marketing manager Max Katsarelas used to make the map, an article in the Georgia State University Law Review from 2002. Check out footnote 153 on page 23 for all the details. While he did integrate current news reports, Katsarelas told AutoblogGreen that he had to update the map recently after finding out that Oregon and Indiana do allow Tesla sales. With the ongoing legislation fights, we don't expect this map to remain current all that long. Still, you can even click it to enlarge. The legality of Tesla being able to sell directly to consumers without third-party dealership franchises could some day change from the patchwork you see above into a single color. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) went on record as saying that Missouri and New Jersey should reconsider its policies that would prevent automakers from direct consumer sales. It's not a national rule, but it is a step in that direction.