Elon " We will be opening up in Mexico later this year."

I suspect this announcement will be more important for the effect it has in the US southwest than in Mexico itself.

Superchargers and official support in Mexico will make it so much easier to take a Tesla to all those vacation spots.
Walter

Saghost said:

I suspect this announcement will be more important for the effect it has in the US southwest than in Mexico itself.

Superchargers and official support in Mexico will make it so much easier to take a Tesla to all those vacation spots.
Walter

Click to expand...

+1 ... I believe that the positioning of Tesla is not as important to sell the cars in Mexico, but to provide the travel structure
(#LoneStarStateNADALobbysucks)

#my1000thpost

....providing yet another location for -

* Texans
* New Mexicans
* Arizonans


to perform something that is, to a greater or lesser degree, illegal in each of those states.

What a wonderful, despicable, outmoded, unjustifiable irony! :cursing:

PS: Congrats on #1,000. You are now Beyond All Hope.

RobStark said:

I tried to figure out how significant a market Mexico can become.

Mercedes Benz sold 38k cars in Canada in 2014 and 19k units in Mexico during 2014.

So if Mexico buys at half the Canadian rate that would be about 600 Model S.

The Mexican new car market is about 1M new cars per year.

Mexico also imports roughly 800k 3-5 year old used American cars per year.

So in addition to new cars, once there are service centers and Superchargers, Mexico might import a significant amount of used Teslas. Bolstering American resale values.

Click to expand...

Thanks this is terrific information. 600 MS per year would be great. Few countries in Europe hit that level.

I checked the TeslaMotors.com Supercharger maps, and there are still no SC symbols in Mexico, even in the 2016 map. By contrast, there are symbols for stations in Russia and many other countries Tesla has not yet entered. So it will be good to watch these and see how plans for Mexico start to take shape.

If this move was really only about putting Superchargers in Mexico for gringos to use, it think it would be on the map already. My expectation is that there is a real market here for both new and CPO cars.

RobStark said:

I tried to figure out how significant a market Mexico can become.

Mercedes Benz sold 38k cars in Canada in 2014 and 19k units in Mexico during 2014.

So if Mexico buys at half the Canadian rate that would be about 600 Model S.

The Mexican new car market is about 1M new cars per year.

Mexico also imports roughly 800k 3-5 year old used American cars per year.

So in addition to new cars, once there are service centers and Superchargers, Mexico might import a significant amount of used Teslas. Bolstering American resale values.

Click to expand...

Could be interesting. Then there's always:

I Totally Made This Up said:

Tesla announces first Mexican store in Cancun. A Tesla spokesperson said "We really wanted to reach the heart of the Mexican luxury automotive market. This is absolutely not an attempt to take advantage of vacationing Americans' poor sense of fiscal prudence."

Click to expand...

But I think official support in Mexico would be beneficial because it should allow Tesla to change its policy and allow Americans to bring their Model S into Mexico.

jhm said:

600 MS per year would be great. Few countries in Europe hit that level.

Click to expand...

Guess I have to defend Europe a bit there . In May there were 8 countries with >50 cars, averaging at 114.

Saghost said:

I suspect this announcement will be more important for the effect it has in the US southwest than in Mexico itself.

Superchargers and official support in Mexico will make it so much easier to take a Tesla to all those vacation spots.
Walter

Click to expand...

And the frunk will make it easy to bring a ... never mind, that would be terrible stereotyping.

hobbes said:

Guess I have to defend Europe a bit there . In May there were 8 countries with >50 cars, averaging at 114.

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That's great to hear. I meant no disrespect to any country. What annoys me is the lack of respect for Mexico. After China and India, South and Central America have the fastest growing auto markets.

Additionally we should note that many of the fast growing auto market may also be excellent markets for Powerwalls and Powerpacks. Mexico has been growing solar at a tremendous clip and would greatly benefit from batteries. So I'd like to see Tesla establish a strong multiproduct presence in these countries.

Looks like Tesla's first store/service center is going to be in Mexico City:
https://chc.tbe.taleo.net/chc01/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=TESLA&cws=1&rid=22194

bh1783 said:

Looks like Tesla's first store/service center is going to be in Mexico City:
https://chc.tbe.taleo.net/chc01/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=TESLA&cws=1&rid=22194

Click to expand...

For someone that works in Mexico city a week a month I cannot think of a worse city (bar one) for driving a tesla, for that matter any nice car. its crazy traffic, crazy drivers and sh!tty roads, beaten only by Mumbai imho.. Good luck to tesla owners in Mexico City, i fear it will be in the shop for body work more than on the road.

Saghost said:

I suspect this announcement will be more important for the effect it has in the US southwest than in Mexico itself.

Superchargers and official support in Mexico will make it so much easier to take a Tesla to all those vacation spots.
Walter

Click to expand...

Most of the Mexicans I know that have immigrated here fly home because travel through the border is too dangerous ... I know one brave couple already took their model S a lot further south but I can not imagine too many people who can afford a Model S not spring for a flight to avoid the chance of being vanished. I love Mexicans and Mexico but the violence there is real and I dress down when I go. I can not see to many Model S's going south of the border unless the violence is under control.

A lot of those Mercedes sales in Canada are the ICE B-Class, which would have a MSRP of under $30,000 if it were offered in the USA. B-Class buyers (except for the few opting for the B-Class ED) are not likely cross-shopping the Model S.

RiverBrick said:

A lot of those Mercedes sales in Canada are the ICE B-Class, which would have a MSRP of under $30,000 if it were offered in the USA. B-Class buyers (except for the few opting for the B-Class ED) are not likely cross-shopping the Model S.

Click to expand...

This is why Rob is using a ratio of 1200 MS to 38,000 Mercedes in Canada to get 600 MS to 19,000 Mercedes in Mexico.

Also we should note that Model X sales are incremental to this as would be the sale of Power products (different channel, I suspect, but brand presence matters). The other obvious point is that establishing a presence for Models S & X sets the stage for Model 3 and CPO sales.

Virtual Net Metering in Mexico

Mexico: North America’s New Frontier For Solar Power

Mexico has a very progressive federal virtual net metering law. The federal government owns and operates the power grid; however, the virtual net metering law allows an entity to generate power anywhere in the grid and use that power anywhere else in the grid as a form of self-generation and self-consumption of power. There is a small transmission fee for the use of the transmission and distribution infrastructure, underpriced according to some. The definition of self-consumption is quite flexible and formation of special purpose legal entities makes it pretty easy to get around the distinction of self-contained generation within an entity and transmission between separate entities, so much so that the self-generation criteria may simply be dropped. So the electrical market in Mexico is moving very close to a free market where anyone can buy and sell power using the grid merely as a low cost mechanism to deliver the power.

Even now the virtual net metering law could be well exploited by Tesla. It gives Tesla the ability to set up solar and wind generation facilities wherever it is economical to do so and direct that power to Superchargers, stores and other destinations. The cost of transmission is trivial. Tesla's whole operation and fleet can be entirely powered from cheap renewable energy and the use of Power batteries rounds this out to make it quite doable. I would encourage Tesla to see how far they can push this. For example, can the push power into destination chargers and home chargers? Could Tesla push power into Powerwalls as a service allowing homeowners to use that energy for any use? These sorts of possibilities really could turn Tesla into an energy company, a virtual power company, in Mexico. Customers could power their cars, homes and businesses all from renewable energy produced and stored by Tesla.

This is worth trying and could serve as an energy policy test bed for the rest of the world.

Baja California? From my understanding a lot of Americans retire there.

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, forgive me if it's already been mentioned. 2015 and 2016 North America maps now zoomed out a bit. Enough to include Mexico City?

Can Havana be far behind.