By: IOL Motoring Staff
American electric carmaker Tesla looks set to enter the South African market with its new Model 3 sedan.
While we have yet to receive official confirmation from Tesla's PR office, the company's founder, SA-born Elon Musk, recently Tweeted that South Africa was one of seven countries that had been added to the Model 3's order page .
The order page does include South Africa and allows prospective buyers to reserve a Model 3 for $1000 (R14 770).
According to the reservation agreement , your deposit “secures the approximate delivery priority within your region” but it does not constitute the purchase or order of a vehicle. Only when production for your reservation nears, Tesla will allow you to configure the vehicle and send you a purchase agreement detailing all the costs.
Until that agreement has been signed, Tesla says the reservation can be cancelled at any time, in which case buyers would get a refund, but that also forces us to ask whether Tesla is seriously committed to entering SA or whether it is simply gauging interest for now.
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Either way, you can expect a rather lengthy wait, given that production is only set to commence at the tail end of 2017 and then Tesla will have a long order backlog to work through, with over 250 000 orders having been received in the first three days alone.
It is too early to speculate on pricing then, especially given the volatility of the rand, but Telsa has promised a US-market starting price of $35 000, which worked out to just over R500 000 at the time of writing, and then you'd still have to add import duties.
IT’S QUITE A PERFORMER
Billed as Tesla's 'affordable model' (given that it costs half as much as the Model S), the Model 3 is seen as a make-or-break car for the California-based electric car company, which is hoping to ramp annual production up to 500 000 units once the Model 3 is on stream.
The all-wheel drive sedan is certainly no slouch, with Telsa claiming it'll accelerate from 0-96km/h in under six seconds, while the opposite driving approach should allow a range of over 320km/h between charges, according to official claims.
The next question is whether South Africa's charging infrastructure would be ramped up by the time the Tesla goes on sale here.
So far the only all-electric cars on sale in South Africa are the BMW i3 and Nissan Leaf. Both companies are currently collaborating on the roll-out of fast-charging stations at various places.