Hong Kong boasts “the most number of Teslas per capita”

Tesla is starting to use its success in Hong Kong to expand its push into China, and in a recent interview Elon Musk stated that Hong Kong boasts “the most number of Teslas per capita”, which is interesting, and somewhat surprising, given that California (and Oslo) are usually thought of as being the main Tesla strongholds. Furthermore, the video states that “Hong Kong has the highest density of Superchargers in the world.” However, this news comes alongside a recent report claiming that Tesla has dropped its 2016 Chinese sales target to 50% that of it's 2015 target due to poor local sales.

Tesla is making an intentional, full-force push into China by way of focused attention on the dense urban centers, starting with Hong Kong. A recently released official Tesla Motors video supported a trip Elon made to the high-tech city where he was interviewed at Invest HK. Both videos brag about how great a pair Hong Kong and Tesla will be in the future and, in fact, already is today:

In the interview, Elon shared that Hong Kong boasts “the most number of Teslas per capita” — an impressive claim given the high density of Teslas that can be seen zooming around Southern California each day (not to mention Silicon Valley and Oslo). To support this fleet, the official Tesla video shares the counterpoint that, “Hong Kong has the highest density of Superchargers in the world.”

Zooming out a few steps makes it obvious that the high volume of

Teslas and the great Supercharger coverage go hand in hand. The Tesla Supercharging map reveals that Beijing and Shanghai are also feeling the Tesla Supercharging love, though not quite as much as Hong Kong.

It’s easy to think that this is just a big push by Tesla to get a jump on a new world market to establish market leadership, and Tesla is certainly looking to drive new sales in China, but the full story goes much deeper than that. China is the world’s largest auto market and, as such, Tesla is also looking to catalyze the competition to move into what will likely be the world’s largest EV market.

To kickstart the big Tesla move into China, the company is aggressively pursuing partnerships with local companies, which is a requirement to manufacture in the country. Elon Musk shared that Tesla is “very excited by the partnership with Hong Kong.”

This interview has a very different tone to it vs many of the other interviews floating around the interwebs, and they get into some tangential topics vs the typical “tell me about Tesla, SpaceX, and Solar City” questions, which is fun. Check it out for yourself:

Hong Kong and Map Image Credit: Tesla Motors

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