In my opinion, is pretty simple
It's simply too expensive to have meaningful volume here considering the country fleet and population size
As you said, easy to have a few, hard to make a dent on the market even with 3/Y. We see those two becoming the best or close to the best sold in every market they are available, impossible to even come close to that here
The Brazilian Real has lost a ton of value on the past years, on top of that the new vehicle price skyrocket, today you can buy the most barebones new car for close to to what you could buy a nice medium class SUV 5 years ago, it's completely ridiculous, you are paying a lot for absolute garbage
For context, the cheapest new car you can buy today here is R$ 70k or ~$ 14K, a Model 3, assuming it would arrive for the same price as in the U, which is unlikely) would be R$ 200k, if it was the same price as in China R$132k
Both still too high in my opinion for market dominance, the most sold passenger car in 2022 was the Hyundai HB20, which goes for R$ 84k
Don't think Tesla need to go for this low price to be the market leader, but something between R$ 100k and R$150 k, which would be $ 20k to $ 30k
And this is not counting the huge infrastructure expense it has to build at the same time
TLDR: Brazil needs a cheaper vehicle to have good market penetration and make it worth the cost on entering this market, so whatever comes out of Mexico makes sense. And I still think there is a huge cultural battle to be fought, won't be quick adoption to market dominance, but a slow uphill climb, but will get there
I gave a disagree on this one, not because the total market conclusions are incorrect, they are correct, but the conclusions miss the actual point. Brazil is a huge market, and as with many large markets the use of 'measures of central tendency' generates significant errors. On average (mean) Brazil has no likely luxury car market.
However Brazil did sell 23,000 cars in roughly Model S and above prices in 2022 (data behind paywall, but includes only Land/Range Rover, BMW, Merceds-Benz, Volvo and excluded the exotics. Even Porsche sold 2200 cars in Brazil in 2022 including 118 Taycans.
That total market and more is entirely plausible were tesla do do what it does elsewhere, i.e. expand and create a new market. In any event the addressable market for the current Tesla product line in Brazil is primarily located in the wealthiest parts of urban centers. The simplest way to know where Tesla should concentrate is to find the dealerships for luxury cars, all located conveniently close to their target audience.
Tesla need not cover the entire market and need not even cover all the area between those concentrations. After all, the target audience rarely travels long distance by car inside Brazil, although they do that often at their homes abroad, which many do.
Fundamentally the problem is a quite common one. Generally people who aren't familiar with the income inequality rife in much often world simply think in terms of averages (mean) so miss markets.
There is a reason why Brazil has such a concentration of excellent restaurants in cities such as Rio de Janaeiro, even Fortaleza, Salvador, Florianopolis and others. That si NOT to serve average people.
Elon Musk, born and partly raised in South Africa, understands that as do a number of Tesla executives.
Even many highly intelligent people who live in these places do not understand. I recall Carlos Ghosn saying the Brazil should have only the cheapest Renault and Nissan cars for Brazil. Peugeot and Toyota saw things differently. Those results showed Mr. Ghosn made a critical blunder. They threw away money.
Finally, the world though the new VAG ownership of Bentley was crazy when they introduced the Bentley Continental, which sold more >$150,000 cars in one year in the US than the entire previous years >$150,00 market. That story was repeated when Tesla introduced the Model S.
Now it seems we are confusing Elon's efforts to improve affordability by presuming there is no market for more expensive Tesla also. Myopia! Tesla will NOT abandon more wealthy clients, nor ignore actual market opportunities to serve them.
For reference just check single family house sales prices in any given wealthy bairro anywhere in Brazil. That gives some clues. Then add beachside condominium prices, or if you're brave Coberturas (top floor condos). Those are the places you'll see those Taycan, Range Rover, Volvo BEV's etc. and their shopping centers such as Village Mall with a row of eight free charging stations.
Tesla would sell thousands within a day or two, of existing models.
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