Tesla hong kong

As we reported earlier this month, Tesla President Jon McNeill traveled to Hong Kong to lead talks with the local government in order to extend the tax break for electric vehicles which allowed the global city to become one of the world’s biggest per-capita markets for electric cars.

Apparently, the government hasn’t yet agreed on an extension of the tax break and therefore, Tesla launched a local marketing campaign to boost sales in the city before the end of the year.
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As you may remember, Denmark announced the phasing out of its tax break for electric vehicles by the end of 2015, which caused Tesla’s sales to surge to an all-time high in the country, but they have been virtually non-existent since then. We are talking about going from over 1,000 vehicles delivered in December 2015 to about 100 vehicles delivered throughout the entire year so far.

Now Tesla fears a similar situation in Hong Kong, a very important market for the company, and Tesla President Jon McNeill is currently in the global city to lead talks with the government in order to extend the tax break for EVs and maintain Hong Kong status as a “beacon city” for electric vehicles.
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Last month, we reported that Tesla has 80% market share of Hong Kong’s growing electric vehicle market. Yet, that’s only ~1% of the city’s entire automotive market. Now the automaker aims to double its impact and dominance in the EV market by introducing its all-electric SUV, the Model X, in Hong Kong.
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Aside from regulations preventing them from releasing some of its in-car features, Tesla and Elon Musk love Hong Kong. The CEO was in the City earlier this year for a special event for Tesla owners and he said that Hong Kong is a “beacon city for electric vehicles”.

The California-based automaker now dominates the electric vehicle market in the global city with a 80% market share of Hong Kong’s 5,800 EVs as of this July. A 60-fold increase in electric vehicles, mostly all-electric, since 2010.

Germany now says that the local government is playing favorite and it wants to dislodge Tesla has the leading electric vehicle brand in Hong Kong.
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After Tesla introduced its Autopilot update (7.0) with the ‘Autosteer’ and ‘Auto Lane Change’ features for Model S in October last year, the automaker had to quickly rollback and disable the features for owners in Hong Kong after a formal request from regulators at the Transport Department.

It took about 5 months for Tesla and the regulators to sort it out and reintroduce the features to Model S owners in Hong Kong. Now the Transport Department is at it again and in a very strange move, it forced Tesla to rollback its Calendar app in its vehicles.
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After Tesla introduced its Autopilot update (7.0) with the ‘Autosteer’ and ‘Auto Lane Change’ features for Model S in October last year, the automaker had to quickly rollback and disable the features for owners in Hong Kong after a formal request from regulators at the Transport Department.

Today, about 5 months later, Model S owners in Hong Kong are finally reporting having received a new update enabling the features following a greenlight from the government regulators.
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