Fully agree with fito. China will be the biggest market for Tesla, at least account for 50%. Here are my reasons:
1. China has very large pool of affluent consumers, it's world's larget luxury car market, e.g. accounts 49% of Benz S class sales from 2010-2012. With model S priced significantly lower than it's US competitors in China, the demand will be easily over 50K/year for model S alone and potentially over 100K/year combining model S and X in the future;
2. EV is the most suitable solution for battling air pollution issues in big chinese city like Beijing, Shanghai and almost everywhere. Chinese government is really focusing on the path and have generous subsidy and incentive plan for domestic EV manufacturers;
3. EV has not as much as "range anxiety" in China like in US because chinese ususally live in big city downtown, their commute is mainly within the city. The highway is much less busy than US ones, so long distance driving is not a major concern for chinese even it's still an issue needs to be resolved;
The major concern is the home charger installation. The % of chinese owning a house with dedicated garage is low, so it's not quite convenient to install charger in apartment and roadside parking. But I think it's an issue not only for tesla but also for other EVs, so Chinese government and Tesla will find solutions eventually before it becomes a limiting factor for sales volume (so far it's still production limited)
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Two other points:
4. EV has great advantage of energy consumption in traffic jam which is very common in chinese big cities
5. In China the electricity bill is about 1/3 of US and gasoline price is 3x of US, so the EV energy consumption cost is estimated to be 1/10 of ICE compared to only 1/3 in US
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There is a thread in
www.autohome.com.cn TESLA forum about this. Summarize some reports in below:
model S:
2/23: 574
2/26: 623
3/13: 892
model X:
2/07: 351
I'd love to know how many reservations they have in China as of now.
With speculation, I like to rely on empirical data. So, if we've got reservation numbers that would be the best. If we don't have reservation numbers, then we ought to rely on China reservation holders to let us know what demand is like. Or, if I lived in Beijing I would go to the Tesla Beijing store a few times a week over a long period of time and do my own fact-finding and surveys. I would overhear all the conversations and also make friends with the sales reps to find out how reservations are going.