In a telling move, Vancouver will soon become home to North America’s largest Tesla service centre.
Real estate developer Beedie has partnered with Tesla to build the 120,000-sq.-ft purpose-built service facility, which will open up shop at 950 Raymur Avenue, on an existing brownfield site within Vancouver’s Strathcona neighborhood. Fittingly, the west coast city is home to some of Canada’s highest rates of electric vehicle (EV) adaptation.
The innovative, state-of-the-art centre will cater to the most revolutionary EVs on the road today. As Tesla’s most expansive service centre, it will boast the largest service capacity in Western Canada.
Operations at the new, two-storey Vancouver Tesla facility will include servicing, vehicle preparation, delivery operations, and a showroom where customers can learn more about the benefits of electric vehicle ownership.
“At Beedie, we are committed to building legacies for our vibrant communities, so the opportunity to support the transition to electric vehicles through this partnership with Tesla is exciting,” said Ryan Beedie, President of Beedie. “We have often collaborated with innovative companies on unique, built-to-suit projects and we look forward to working closely with Tesla and the local community in the coming years.”
There is undoubtedly a demand for a shiny new Tesla centre. Vancouver leads major Canadian cities when it comes to electric vehicles on the roads, and British Columbia tops Quebec as the EV capital of Canada.
“We are pleased to have partnered with Beedie to build our future flagship British Columbia location in the heart of Vancouver,” says Fereshteh Zeineddin, Tesla’s Director of Vehicle Sales and Service in Canada. “With this new facility, we look to better serve our Vancouver-area customers and further support electric vehicle adoption in the province.”
Beedie is expected to begin construction in Q1 of 2024 with an estimated completion of Q1, 2026.
The announcement of the new centre comes at a time when Tesla continues to expand its footprint in BC. The brand is fresh from the opening of a new purpose-built showroom and service centre in Langford, Victoria. Furthermore, this past summer, Tesla announced it had partnered with Bosa Properties to create a purpose-built flagship service and delivery centre in Port Coquitlam.
While we’ll have to wait a couple of years for the massive new Raymur Avenue centre to materialize, two things are already clear: a sleek and innovative space will surely be easier on the eyes than the current plot of vacant industrial land, and there will definitely be a demand for the centre, as more people turn to EV ownership.
Helping this cause, this fall, the BC government announced it would introduce new regulations for all cars to be zero emission by 2035. In the meantime, stats released by the BC government in April revealed that EV models accounted for 18.1% of the province’s light-duty vehicle sales in 2022 – an increase from 13% in 2021.
