Back when Packards and Studebakers were all the rage on the streets of America, the prime car buying territory in Manhattan was the area on the far west side in the 50s. Even today, that neighborhood still has a number of new and used car showrooms…although why anybody would have a car in Manhattan is another story altogether.
But when it comes to EVs – electric vehicles – one unexpected area of Manhattan seems to have become prime territory for car brands wishing to reach consumers. And with EVs approaching 10 percent of all new car sales in the country, it’s likely to get even more attention from new vehicle shoppers.
It you would have never guessed it’s the trendy downtown Meatpacking District, you’re excused for thinking that the place to go for Zagat-worthy restaurants, hard-to-get-past-the-velvet-ropes clubs and retail stores for the rich and famous is also home to a concentration of EV auto showrooms.
With the recent opening of a space for start-up brand Rivian (pictured above) joining existing stores for Tesla and Lucid, the Meatpacking District is, excuse the expression, starting to pack in places to see the latest in electric travel. Of course, there are all the downtown hipsters who are prospective customers but the area is also a prime tourist neighborhood particularly as it anchors one end of the extremely popular High Line, now ranked as the second most popular attraction in the city according to one source.
All of these car showrooms, it should be noted, are owned by the manufacturers themselves and not traditional dealerships which are licensed out to independent retailers. As such, they have different vibes than the Sansabelt salesmen who fit the car dealer stereotype and are as much about the experience of seeing these cars in person as they are about handing over a check and buying one of them. In fact, New York state law forbids manufacturers to actually sell directly from their own stores though Tesla at least seems to have figured workarounds in some of its locations in the country.
It was Tesla, as it is with many things in the EV world, that was the first to set up shop in the District, opening its store on Washington Street in 2017. When it opened it also housed solar panels from another Elon Musk company, Solar City. The 11,000-square-foot space shows the full range of Tesla vehicles and, of course, serves espresso.
The next EV brand to arrive was Lucid, which opened its 9th Avenue store in 2021. The company calls the 3,000-square-foot space a “Studio” and when it opened it had a stripped down model that showed the electric underpinnings of its Lucid Air flagship model, without a body or interior. Lucid now has 35 stores in the country plus another five globally.
The latest entry into the EV neighborhood is Rivian, which opened in May on 10th Avenue, literally directly under the High Line. The company calls its store “Rivian Spaces” and it marks this brand’s first physical footprint on the East Coast following the initial location in Venice, CA. As with its predecessors, Rivian makes a big point about how its new retail outlet doesn’t feel like a traditional car dealership and goes so far to evoke the name of Apple, the gold-standard of uber-cool retailing to describe its vibe. Rivian says the 5,000-square-foot store is a temporary one and will eventually be replaced by a permanent one in the even trendier Williamsburg neighborhood across the river in Brooklyn.
While Tesla continues to set records in its production levels and is estimated to control about 60% of the overall EV market in the U.S., both Lucid and Rivian are far behind and have faced significant financial challenges as they try to ramp up production. These are similar to what Tesla went through in its earlier years before it truly took off.
In the meantime, you can have a lovely lunch at the new RH Guest House restaurant, pick up a few things at Hermes and Sephora and then showroom-test your new EV, all in the confines of the Meatpacking District. If only all of those long-gone real meat-packing companies could see the place now.
WarrensReport 