As we anticipated yesterday, Tesla is officially launching in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) today. We already knew about a store and service center in Dubai, as well as the first deployment of charging infrastructure, but CEO Elon Musk has now revealed more details about the company’s plans for the region.
For example, we already knew that Tesla installed a Supercharger station, its first in the Middle East, between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but the company actually already deployed another station near Abu Dhabi and brought them both online today.
As you can see on the picture above, several Destination chargers (grey) are also now listed in UAE.
There are 26 individual Destination charger locations and the company plans to add 50 more by the end of the year. They are mostly located in hotels and shopping centers.
Speaking of shopping centers, Tesla plans a store and service location on Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, as we reported yesterday, but the company will also operate a pop-up location in the Dubai mall since the store will not be ready until the summer.
Potential customers will be able to schedule test drives from the new retail location and orders are now open for the Model S and X.
The vehicles, which are imported from the US, are priced at 275,000 dirhams (~$75,000 USD) for Model S and 344,000 dirhams (~$94,000 USD) for Model X. Deliveries will start in July.
The United Arab Emirates are relatively small and Tesla could cover the region quite efficiently with little infrastructure, which the company seems eager to deploy. Musk said that 5 more Supercharger stations should open in UAE by the end of the year and a store and service center will follow in Abu Dhabi in 2018.
That’s the company’s first significant push in the region, but Musk added that they have plans to expand in other countries around the Gulf, namely to Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
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