Tesla owner and enthusiast Khalil Amar has a special request for Elon Musk: Morocco needs Tesla Supercharging stations. In 2019, we covered the adventures of Tesla Club Tunisia, whose members helped their small country set up Tesla chargers at different hotels. In another article that we covered for the Tesla experience in Tunisia back in 2019, Amar was credited as a major source of help setting up charging stations in hotels. Amar has tweeted several times that Morocco needs Superchargers, but like many tweets aimed at Elon Musk and Twitter, they tend to get buried and Elon may not have seen them at all (probably didn’t).
What Do You Know About Morocco, Elon?
What Amar hopes to do is not just educate Elon Musk and Tesla on just how much Morocco has done in the green tech industry, but also make a practical case in favor of Tesla setting Superchargers in Morocco. With this in mind, Amar sent me two articles.
The first article, by Morocco World News, shared that the country’s renewable energy industry boosted the country’s resilience during the recent oil industry shocks. Morocco has been a leader in renewable energy in Africa, and it is paying off in increasingly diverse ways.
In the second article Amar shared with me, also by Morocco World News, shares that the country was among the top five sources of car exports to Europe in 2018. There were 283,614 units exported. Cars made in Morocco only accounted for 7.8% of all the cars exported to the EU in 2018. Amar’s question about this is: “Could there be a Tesla assembly line in Morocco in the future?”
Tesla’s Potential Advantage In Morocco
Morocco is around 1/10 larger than California geographically and borders the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. Its climate is hot and dry during most of the year. Along with bordering the ocean and the sea, it also borders the Sahara Desert, which is the world’s largest desert — which made the country ideal for the world’s largest concentrated solar power (CSP) plant. The Noor-Ouarzazate complex is built on an area of more than 3,000 hectares and produces enough power for a city the size of Prague to use. The farm is located along with the gateway to the Sahara Desert. With its 580 megawatt power capacity, it has saved the planet from over 760,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.
Although this idea is more about pitching to Elon Musk the value of having Tesla Superchargers in Morocco, that would be only the first step toward a large advantage for Tesla in Morocco. It would be the equivalent of sticking your toes through the door that has been cracked open by Tesla owners such as Amar. For those who love racing, Morocco is the host country for the Marrakesh ePrix. Many Tesla owners love going on the track and racing their performance vehicles. Bringing Superchargers into Morocco would also entice car and racing enthusiasts to try Tesla’s vehicles and could be a motivation for customers to buy the higher-end vehicles — many cars that people buy in Morocco are exported. Tesla would fit in rather well here.
At the end of the day, Amar wants to know: “Will there be a deployment of Superchargers and service centers in Morocco? What is slowing Tesla from opening or what are the prerequisites?” Anyone with answers, we’re all ears.