LOS ANGELES — Forget the cheesy-suited, high-pressure stereotype of your everyday car dealership (“How can we can get you in one of these today?”). With its exposed wooden rafters, slick concrete floors and chatty central bar, Tesla Motors’ first store on Santa Monica Boulevard here is an art gallery/coffee house/Apple store hybrid for plug-in vehicles—and the salespeople want you to gawk as much as buy.

“Have a look around, have fun, and if you have any questions, ask,” a friendly employee told us within three steps of our first visit to the store, which opened here on Tuesday. Then she handed us a cup of java and a brochure.

Sure, there’s not too much of a pitch necessary when you’re selling the first viable all-electric production sportscar. But one reason for the low-pressure tactics is that Tesla doesn’t actually have any of its Roadsters available for you to take home. Even if you walked in here with a suitcase packed full of $109,000, the three cars in the showroom are either engineering or validation prototypes.

“We do waiting lists—that’s how it works right now,” says Tesla’s Tom O’Leary, who is supervising the opening of Tesla’s premiere dealership before moving north in a few months to open a second one near Stanford University. The waiting list (60 grand required) currently stands at about 15 months, O’Leary says, with the likes of George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger near the top. “We’ll ramp up production to about 40 cars a week by the end of the year,” he told us.

As I speak with O’Leary, a jovial man in his fifties walks in donning an Aston Martin jacket. O’Leary has been expecting him. Fresh off a flight from Switzerland, the man traveled here for a short test drive of the Roadster before putting down his deposit (we got our test drive more than a year and a half ago). But again, there are no sales tactics. The three of us enthusiasts chat about Le Mans racecars, Aston Martins (of which this man owns several) and classic Ferraris—for an hour.

As you can see from the photos at right, a lot of the space here is reserved for service. The service bay, in fact, accounts for more than half of the Tesla store, with three lifts, sparkling floors and handsome glass walls that let you hang out at the front counter and see clear through to the techs in back (soon you’ll see the view from the sidewalk). That stands in stark contrast to your average car dealership, where the greasy work is hidden way in the back—call it a sign of cleaner times.

O’Leary says Tesla has sold three Roadsters at the store in its first three days. As we leave, he unplugs the Glacier Blue-colored prototype in the service bay for our new friend’s promised drive. But like so many passionate enthusiasts for the Tesla brand and its Roadster, this man was probably ready to sign on the dotted line before he even walked through the door. —Ben Stewart