Last week, Tesla began deliveries of right-hand-drive Tesla Model S’s in Asia, Hong Kong to be specific. Movie stars*, rich tech lovers, and Tesla’s Vice President of World Wide Sales and Service, Jerome Guillen, were present.
Aside from the Model S deliveries, Tesla unveiled some Supercharger stations, as noted in the video below.
It’s great to see Tesla hitting its target for Model S deliveries to Asia. However, the downside, as I mentioned yesterday, is that Tesla still doesn’t indicate how many vehicles are being delivered to different countries or regions, so those of us trying to keep track of US and other country-specific deliveries are now going to have an even tougher time of that. Maybe Tesla will finally start reporting like other automakers, but I’m not holding my breath.
*If you’re curious which Hong Kong movie star is now a Model S owner, it’s Alex Fong (if that rings a bell).
Have been wondering for a long time now why small city states like HK and Singapore haven’t been targeted as the primary drawback stated by anti electric vehicle lobbyists is the lack of reach, hardly an issue when driving in HK. These city states are perfectly suited to electric cars (especially Singapore where the license plate is linked to the car for just 10 years and some very high taxes, the government could easily provide huge incentives to the electric vehicle market and given the already high price of cars there, EVs could be cheaper with the right policies). IMHO Tesla should really focus on penetrating such markets and forget about markets like Australia which has nothing going for it (large distances, small population, carbon loving government, redhead culture). A lot of people say “why bother with HK the air will always be bad due to it’s proximity to China” but I recall reading a report stating that in fact 25% of the air pollution there is caused by vehicle emissions. That’s vehicles driving 10 km or so a day a spending half an hour in traffic jams! The only electric vehicles I’ve seen in Singapore are Prius taxis which makes little sense given that they are meant to be in service 24 hours a day (no down time for charging). Meanwhile private vehicles drive round and round spewing out toxins. it’s such a shame to see markets like this that are perfectly suited to electric vehicles being virtually ignored by the leader in this field.