So after more than a year since I started this thread we know for sure that Tesla will establish itself soon in Turkey. Their expansion in Northwestern Europe was more rapid than I expected and I am impressed. As a Turkish Tesla enthusiast who can't wait to get a Tesla here in the country with the extreme fuel prices, I am stoked to see 9 superchargers planned in Turkey by the end of 2016 and one by the end of next year.
As an Apple enthusiast alongside my Tesla love, I saw Apple's initiation officially in the country besides the certified resellers just a couple years ago that resulted with Apple launching their iTunes Music Stores, Online Apple Store and their first ever Turkish Apple Store. The way they went about with that was "green field venture" so they started almost from scratch gathering up talents, hiring and researching key people, looking up locations, doing analysis etc. So they had a lot of work to do before they did the grand opening of their Istanbul Apple Store. (took them more than a year)
So with only a month left in 2014, and the map showing one supercharger in Istanbul by 2015, shouldn't Tesla start their operations here already? Still no rumours (not that Tesla rumour mill is as big as Apple's) haven't seen any job applications regarding Tesla nor anyone speculated a store location. I saw in one Turkish website and this guy said they were just opening a supercharger in Istanbul so people could travel there, supercharger didn't mean store and official sales, service, representation etc.
What do you guys think? Will we see something like that soon enough?
As I've mentioned in my original post Tesla has a great advantage here. ICE cars have extreme taxing here (below 1.6cc 45%, 1.6-2.0 90% and above 2.0liter engines 145%(!)) With electric vehicles though the biggest tax rate is 15%. So in countries with reasonable taxing you can get an M5 for 100,000 euros, but in Turkey it sets you back 260K euros. If Tesla were to start sales here, Model S p85D would probably cost like 110K euros at most so this means rich Turkish people (there are a lot of them) can get a car which is the equivalent of an M5 if not better for less than half the price. Plus with an EV you don't pay the yearly tax which is on average 1K euros a year. Considering a base model BMW 520d costs 80K euros here I'm thinking Teslas will sell like hotcakes. (just like it did in Scandinavia) In fact because our government is sheer evil they probably will come out with a special tax for EVs that will put Tesla's price up there with others. Because if not, after the Model 3 launch Tesla's factories will only produce cars for Turkey, the demand will be that great.