Tesla plans to sell its four models in Turkey

Eyüp Serbest - ISTANBUL

The U.S. electric carmaker Tesla plans to introduce all of its four models, Model X, Model Y, Model 3 and Model S, to the Turkish market this year.

The carmaker has taken steps aiming at the local market. The company appointed Kemal Geçer as the CEO of Tesla Motorları, its local subsidiary, and lifted its capital from 710,000 Turkish Liras to 50 million liras. Geçer previously served as Lufthansa’s Turkey-Iraq CEO.

Tesla Motorlari will market the company’s four models in Turkey.

The electric carmaker aims to introduce the models to the public and unveil prices as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s website shows the likely supercharger locations in 10 provinces, Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Bursa, Edirne, Balıkesir, Antalya, Aydin, Konya and the Hendek district of the northwestern province of Sakarya.

The charging stations will be launched at easily accessible locations, such as highways and shopping centers.

The target opening date will be confirmed and timing and location will be subject to change, the website says.

The company will set up service and maintenance teams for customers. It will also have sales offices and stores network which are expected to create thousands of jobs. Job ads are expected to be posted on the company’s website shortly.

Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, visited the country back in 2017 and met with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

In December last year, Erdoğan and Musk also held a video conference. During the talk, Musk stated that he was looking forward to doing many projects with Turkey in the future.

For his part, the president noted that matters regarding cooperation between the public and private sector institutions in Turkey and the company in various fields, particularly satellite and space technologies, were addressed.

Shortly after the video call, Turkey’s Turksat 5B, the country’s eighth active satellite in space, was launched into space with a Falcon 9 rocket on Dec. 19, 2021 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, the U.S.

Erdoğan expressed his hope that the productive relationship with Space X in the realm of space operations would continue to flourish.

Data from the Automotive Distributors’ Association (ODD) showed that a total of 2,846 electric vehicles were sold in Turkey in 2021, marking a robust 237 percent increase from the previous year. In December 2021 alone, the sale electric vehicles rose by 56 percent on an annual basis to 431 units.