Tesla confident it can hold pole position in Hong Kong’s electric vehicle market
The California carmaker unveils new family-friendly Model X, a follow-up to the Model S, which became the city’s top-selling sedan
As companies such as LeEco and Faraday Future continue to work on electric cars in the hopes of conquering the market segment, Tesla is hardly worried by the upcoming competition.
“I don’t think [Tesla] needs to worry about competition at this point. We are confident about our technology,” said Robin Ren, vice-president for Asia-Pacific at Tesla. “Less than 0.2 per cent of the cars sold globally last year were electric vehicles … so there is a lot of opportunity in the market.”
In August, Chinese internet giant LeEco announced that it would invest 12 billion yuan to create an electric-car factory in eastern China for its LeSee autonomous driving vehicle.
LeEco also invested in Los Angeles-based start-up Faraday Future, which is working on its own FFZero1 concept electric car that is reminiscent of Batman’s Batmobile.
However, Ren said Tesla was still barely scratching the surface for mainstream electric-vehicle adoption despite its fast growth in mainland China and Hong Kong. He added that Tesla hoped more carmakers would join the mix to help shift the world towards electric vehicles as a more sustainable means of transport.
“Even in a city like Hong Kong, [which is successful for Tesla], our growth potential is huge,” Ren said.