I‘m concerned that Iceland doesn‘t seem to be in Tesla‘s future plans. When looking at the map of stores/service stations in EU here (http://www.teslamotors.com/en_EU/findus/stores) Iceland is left out (like many other EU countries I realize). That being said, I know that Gísli Gíslason has been given some sort of a dealership privileges for Iceland, and as far as I know, Iceland is the only country that seems to have to suffer a dealership if interested in buying a Tesla. His method of selling the cars also worries me. In this article http://www.plugincars.com/tesla-model-s-iceland-first-7-cars-movers-and-shakers-128446.html one can read that Gísli made a list, on which his wealthy friends were, of people he offered the cars to. I know Tesla is an exclusive vehilce but come on. If this way of business continues the image of the brand here will be „rich boys toy“ instead of „cutting edge, high tech vehicle of the future“ and what then when Gen3/BlueStar comes along? We are badly burned by rich boys toying with our banks before the collapse in 2008 so it won‘t be hard for the general public, who I believe Tesla eventually wants to reach, to put two and two together. Another thing is Gísli is loosing credibilty. For years hes been on about how next year he will import so and so many hundred EVs or install so and so many charging stations around the country. He even fooled Elon Musk into believing he would buy 1000 Model S‘s. To be fair to Gísli, he has brought in and sold about 12 cars and I believe a few more are on the way. He gave car reporters of all of the newspapers here a Model S to try out and all of their verdict was the same: this was something entierly different. And the future. For now there is no dealership/store one can visit to see/try a Model S himself. EVEN (Gísli‘s Tesla import company) never advertises the brand or organizes a show in lets say one of our big malls. Complete silence from them if your not deemed worthy.
Here in Iceland we have very similar taxcuts on automobiles that use domestic energy as Norway has. No duty or VAT is paid when importing, road tax is really low and they can be parked for free in public parking spaces. This does not mean that electric vehicles are cheap here, they are actually rather more expensive that ICE cars, initially. But what we do have is electricity in abundace, green and cheap geothermal and hydroelectric electricity. Another valuable asset we have is EV awereness. Most of us know about EVs and how far they have come. There has been a huge media coverage both in newspapers and evening news on TV of how Norwegians have fared in electrifying their fleet, hence we know that Tesla can make it in Icelandic conditions.
Islandus.is is a company that imports cars from aboad, mainly from the US, and sells them on to the Icelandic public in a sort of a greyish import way. The have no brands of their own but buy at, what they call, spotprice and sometimes hardly used showmodels from dealerships in the US. They have been marketing EVs in Iceland more than anyone and actually have gotten the biggest piece of the Nissan Leaf pie here. The Nissan dealership here is furious but they don‘t slash their price nonetheless. So, where does islandus.is fit into the icelandic Tesla situation? They are the only ones advertising Tesla in the icelandic media. For the most part of november they had a half page ad next to the car classifieds in Iceland‘s most widespread newspaper that either featured the Model S or the Leaf. They have been pushing the Model S but as far as I know they have not delivered any.
Icelanders like their SUVs. Next year the Model X comes out. By then I‘d like Tesla to have given a second thought about how they want the Icelandic market to develop. I do realise that we aren‘t a small market, we‘re a micro maret. But that has advantages to. It doesn‘t cost much to reach a huge portion of the population. We live on an island with a 1300km/800miles ringroute around the island (to which all other roads connect) so we wouldn‘t need many supercharging stations. All of our electricity is domestic and green as stated before so I‘d imagine if Tesla did things right here (opened up their own store like everywhere else) and did manage to get a 20-30% market share (which I think is highly realistic) that might have an advertising effect for the brand around the world. And since we‘re a micromarket, reaching that market share wouldn‘t need that many cars to be produced.
Here in Iceland we have very similar taxcuts on automobiles that use domestic energy as Norway has. No duty or VAT is paid when importing, road tax is really low and they can be parked for free in public parking spaces. This does not mean that electric vehicles are cheap here, they are actually rather more expensive that ICE cars, initially. But what we do have is electricity in abundace, green and cheap geothermal and hydroelectric electricity. Another valuable asset we have is EV awereness. Most of us know about EVs and how far they have come. There has been a huge media coverage both in newspapers and evening news on TV of how Norwegians have fared in electrifying their fleet, hence we know that Tesla can make it in Icelandic conditions.
Islandus.is is a company that imports cars from aboad, mainly from the US, and sells them on to the Icelandic public in a sort of a greyish import way. The have no brands of their own but buy at, what they call, spotprice and sometimes hardly used showmodels from dealerships in the US. They have been marketing EVs in Iceland more than anyone and actually have gotten the biggest piece of the Nissan Leaf pie here. The Nissan dealership here is furious but they don‘t slash their price nonetheless. So, where does islandus.is fit into the icelandic Tesla situation? They are the only ones advertising Tesla in the icelandic media. For the most part of november they had a half page ad next to the car classifieds in Iceland‘s most widespread newspaper that either featured the Model S or the Leaf. They have been pushing the Model S but as far as I know they have not delivered any.
Icelanders like their SUVs. Next year the Model X comes out. By then I‘d like Tesla to have given a second thought about how they want the Icelandic market to develop. I do realise that we aren‘t a small market, we‘re a micro maret. But that has advantages to. It doesn‘t cost much to reach a huge portion of the population. We live on an island with a 1300km/800miles ringroute around the island (to which all other roads connect) so we wouldn‘t need many supercharging stations. All of our electricity is domestic and green as stated before so I‘d imagine if Tesla did things right here (opened up their own store like everywhere else) and did manage to get a 20-30% market share (which I think is highly realistic) that might have an advertising effect for the brand around the world. And since we‘re a micromarket, reaching that market share wouldn‘t need that many cars to be produced.