All of this matches the planned launch timing in the U.S., while nine Superchargers are now up and running in Canada (five out west, two in Ontario, two in Quebec), with another six under construction now to open soon, said Martin Paquet, Tesla Canada’s northeastern region sales manager. By the end of 2015, Tesla plans to have 23 sites in operation, he said, with major corridors enabling travel between Vancouver-Calgary-Edmonton in the west, and the Detroit-Toronto-Montreal-Quebec City corridor and into New Brunswick in the east.

Contrast that with all other mainstream automotive companies. Up until mid-January 2015, Nissan Canada insisted that it was not in the EV infrastructure business, despite significant sums spent in the US, UK, Japan and elsewhere on fast chargers. This infrastructure allows its Leaf owners to travel between cities within reasonable if still longer timeframes (less than half an hour for a complete charge). But just before the opening of the Montreal auto show, Nissan Canada announced a partnership with the province of Quebec to fund 25 DC fast chargers for the province’s Electric Circuit public charging network, with 20 to be installed by the end of this year, and another five at least in 2016. The EC is targeting at least 50 DC fast-charging sites across the province, with these 25 to offer competing SAE Combo and CHAdeMO electric ‘fuel nozzles,’ which is interesting because Nissan can only use the CHAdeMO wands on its current Leaf (along with Mitsubishi i-MiEV and Kia Soul EV owners), while the only current cars that can use the SAE Combo ones are the BMW i3 and fleet-only Chevrolet Spark EV.

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Granted, neither of these are the quickest EV fast-charging systems around – that crown belongs to Tesla’s Superchargers. And just like Tesla’s EVs, they’re not only the quickest, but the most advanced fast chargers in the business.

So to recap: an all-electric vehicle lineup. Commission-free, company-owned retailers. An aggressive and effective company-owned fast-charging network. Regular free upgrades to production car software, with available battery upgrades on the Model S and soon the Roadster too. A business plan that invites (so far reluctant) competition from much larger corporate rivals. And, oh yes, a US$5 billion gamble on what will become the largest lithium-ion production facility in the world, with the Gigafactory in Nevada within a few years.

Other luxury automakers are certainly noticing its small but quickly growing sales. They may be far from BMW 3 Series sales, but most of Tesla’s sales at least flirted with if not blew by the symbolic $100,000 price threshold, especially in Canada, first with its six-figure Roadster and now with the Model S, which starts at C$82,270, but quickly rises to just over $94,000 for the larger 85-kWh battery that most buyers covet. Executives from Cadillac, Volvo, Lexus and massive US auto dealer group AutoNation (which feature BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz and Audi dealers, among many others), have all professed interest in Tesla’s mall/boutique showrooms and online sales models, with plans in place to mirror some or many of its retail elements.

Making both Tesla and Elon Musk increasingly difficult if not impossible to ignore, even for luxury powerhouses, no matter what the sales figures say.

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