- Turkey came within striking distance of becoming Tesla’s third-largest global market for the month of June, behind only the United States and China. A surge in demand for a new model tailored to meet the country’s tax regime has driven demand, but analysts doubt this kind of growth is sustainable given GDP per capita is a third that of the United Kingdom.
Rifle through Turkey’s car sales report for January and in the column next to Tesla’s name, you’ll find a big, fat zero.
A lot has since changed. This June, Turkey nearly eclipsed the UK as the brand’s third-largest market in the world for the month.
Tesla sold over 7,200 vehicles in the Eurasian country, within striking distance of the UK’s 7,700—even though the latter set a high bar with its best performance this year.
It came at a clutch moment, too, helping mitigate the otherwise steep second-quarter volume decline and delivering a positive surprise for investors.
More remarkable is the fact that Tesla barely has a footprint in the country, operating only four stores in three locations—Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir—compared to 33 in the UK.
While Tesla has made purchasing cars online almost as easy as ordering from Amazon, customers still need to take delivery and return their vehicles whenever they need them repaired, so the size of its network plays a role in convenience.
“Those numbers are weird. Already southern Europe is struggling with electrification and EV adoption,” JATO Dynamics automotive analyst Felipe Munoz tells Fortune. “So you can imagine what the situation in Turkey is, especially with regard to charging infrastructure.”
One key reason for the sudden success has been a small and easy change made to its best-selling Model Y, but one that is crucial nonetheless: the launch of a version in April specifically tailored for the local market that offers not more power but less. Nearly three-quarters of its sales volume so far this year came in the past two months.
Price difference of $40,000 after tax
Tesla has been swamped by demand ever since it deliberately throttled its Model Y to include a single motor capable of generating only 160 kW of power, instead of the usual 220 kW found elsewhere.
Together with its price below 1.45 million lira ($36,200), it qualifies for Turkey’s lower Special Consumption Tax (SCT), which is levied on top of the value-added tax for certain goods, including luxury items, tobacco, alcohol, fuel, and motor vehicles.
The Tesla Model Y Long Range All-Wheel-Drive with dual motors costs 1.8 million Turkish lira, or roughly $45,000 to purchase, but buyers need to cough up an additional 1.1 million for the 60% SCT.
By comparison, the new single-motor version, which costs 1.4 million lira, only comes with a 10% SCT surcharge that adds just 141,000 lira.
So even though the two models are only about 391,000 lira apart in price, this balloons to 1.6 million, or $40,000, after tax.
Potential stopover point before heading to Russia
Turkey seems like an unlikely candidate for Tesla to drive growth.
Its GDP per capita is not even a third that of the U.K.’s, and household disposable income averaged out to just 374,899 lira, or $9,372, last year. But the company currently needs every help it can get after reporting its second straight quarter of double-digit annual sales declines.
That goes double for Europe, where Tesla has its biggest problems by far.
Here in the largest EV market on the continent, Germany is effectively closing its doors to Tesla despite Elon Musk choosing the Berlin region for his first European factory.
Yet instead of servicing the 35% increase in industry EV sales during the first half, Musk’s politics have caused the brand’s sales to crash 58% over the past six months. Fewer than 8,900 Teslas have been sold in Germany during the first half, versus 12,300 in Turkey.
Munoz suspects another possibility. Turkey could be serving as a stopover before some of the vehicles are shipped to Russia, where nearly 1.3 million new cars are expected to be sold across the vast territory.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has remained a neutral broker in the war with Ukraine.
Grey imports
“Turkey doesn’t have issues with Russia, they still have diplomatic relations, there is still trade and there are flights,” Munoz explained in an interview.
Tesla wouldn’t be the only carmaker in Europe that looks the other way when their cars make their way through third countries into Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
“This is a truth that no one wants to talk about, but is happening,” Munoz added.
With the country shifting the bulk of its economy onto a wartime footing, demand for replacement vehicles can no longer be met locally. Russia has been forced to import nine out of every ten new cars sold during the first half of this year.
Only about a third arrive via official channels, mainly out of China from brands like Chery and Great Wall Motor’s Haval.
The rest—some 56%—are brought into the country through so-called parallel imports.
Typically these are found in many parts of the world where they exist in a legal gray area, entering without the consent of the manufacturer.
But they can cross the line into illegality when they are used to skirt economic sanctions.
With Tesla’s German sales no longer able to help sustain its Berlin plant, the company may be funnelling a large quantity of its production to a Turkish market not statistically wealthy enough to afford such large quantities of EVs.
“I would not be surprised if they are coming from Berlin and then they are being resold where the West cannot sell cars,” Munoz continued. “Sanctions may be hurting the middle class majority, but upper-class Russian buyers are still buying luxury cars—you can see it on the streets of Moscow.”
Tesla did not respond to a request from Fortune for comment.
