While Tesla‘s electric car sales are plummeting in markets such as China, the United States and Europe, where they fell by 6%, 13% and 49% respectively last month due to factors such as fierce competition from Chinese brands such as BYD, or consumer rejection of Elon Musk‘s political positions, the situation is quite the opposite in Turkey, where the American company has had to apologise for being unable to meet the huge demand after running out of stock of the Tesla Model Y in a matter of minutes.
In order to keep the Model Y within the 10% tax bracket in Turkey, Tesla – which sold between January and April 3,450 electric cars on the Turkish market, 860% more than in the same period last year – announced a special discount on the sale of the Model Y in the Eurasian country, leaving its final price at 1.87 million Turkish liras, just over €42,000. This meant that when the company put its famous 100% electric model on sale last week, demand was so high from the outset that even Tesla’s website in Turkey crashed.
In an attempt to get around this problem, some users managed to access Tesla’s website using a VPN to enter the site from other countries, according to information published on social media, which sparked complaints from many customers and users of the American company – as reported by numerous Turkish media outlets – since customers trying to access the site directly from Turkey were unable to access the purchase page or order the vehicle.
The controversy, which became a trending topic on social media in Turkey, forced Tesla to issue a statement saying that its inventory system had been subject to ‘bot attacks’ allegedly originating in Turkey, which had forced the company to block access for this reason: ‘To ensure that our online services continued to function, our security system blocked this bot traffic… This inadvertently affected some real users in Turkey,’ the US company said.
In the statement, Tesla expressed surprise at the huge demand in Turkey, stating that ‘inventory sold out in minutes’ with thousands of Tesla Model Y units sold, according to Turkish newspapers. Tesla also reported that the next stock of Model Y will go on sale in Turkey ‘on 28 May and 4 June at 6:30 p.m.’, with the following prices:
- Tesla Model Y SR RWD (500 km range): 1,866,203 TL (€42,111)
- Tesla Model Y LR RWD (622 km range): 2,662,662 TL (€60,083)
- Tesla Model Y LR AWD (586 km range): 3,465,581 TL (€78,201)
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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