Jordan, a small Middle Eastern country of about 8 million people, is popular in the media these days for its role in the Syrian refugee crisis. The country is providing asylum to about 1 million refugees according to the UN Refugee Agency. Some, including Britain’s Prince Charles, see climate change as the root cause of the civil war in Syria, which sparked the refugee crisis.
An extreme drought believed to have been caused by climate change forced as many as 1.5 million people between 2006 and 2009 to migrate away from lands and into the cities. The sudden urbanization caused social stresses which eventually led to the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
Arguably, Jordan is doing more than its part by offering asylum to so many refugees, but the country is also addressing the root cause by accelerating its plans to curb emissions. The government recently announced a tax and custom duties exemption for electric vehicles and charging equipment. Tesla is one of the first company to take advantage of the new policy.Last month, when asked via Twitter when Tesla plans to enter Middle Eastern markets, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the company is “already in Jordan” and that other Middle Eastern countries should follow “next year”.
We now learn that a few weeks before Musk revealed that Tesla is “already in Jordan”, a chain of gas stations installed Tesla Superchargers at three locations in the country – see the locations on the right from Supercharge.info and the image featured above is from one of the location.
The Supercharger stations, which don’t appear on Tesla’s website, were installed by the Manaseer Group. Tesla has been known on rare occasions to sell Superchargers to be operated privately, and those superchargers are not marked on Tesla’s map.
Model S’s have already been spotted in Jordan – one with a government plate was recently seen in Amman. According to a post (since removed) on Norway’s Tesla Owners Club Facebook page, someone claiming to be a Tesla technician in Jordan said that the company already delivered 107 Model S’s in the country.
Surprisingly, Tesla doesn’t seem to be operating any retail location or service centers in Jordan at the moment.
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Jordan is the first ME country in Tesla’s expansion plan .. interesting to see
Hope more cars will arrive soon as they’re exempted from taxes.