According to Bloomberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk expressed his irritation with Tesla’s sluggish sales in the Japanese market during an earnings call earlier today.
Elon Musk said bluntly, “In some regions, our market share is very low, such as Japan. We should at least have a market share commensurate with other non-Japanese car companies, such as Mercedes-Benz or BMW, but currently we obviously do not.”
Elon Musk blamed it on a “lack of awareness,” a view he said he had heard from Japanese friends. According to reports, the problem (Tesla’s sluggish local market) is not a “lack of ambition”. Elon Musk once predicted that Japan would become Tesla’s largest market outside the United States.
It was previously reported that Akio Toyoda, chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation, predicted a few days ago that the market share of pure electric vehicles is unlikely to exceed 30%. He believes consumers should have free choice when it comes to choosing alternatives to internal combustion engine vehicles. Elon Musk responded to the incident by posting a post on the X platform with only one word: Sigh.
Earlier today, Tesla released its 2023 financial report, with total annual revenue of US$96.773 billion (currently approximately 692.895 billion RMB), a year-on-year increase of 19%. Tesla produced 494,989 electric vehicles and delivered 484,507 vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2023; for the full year, it produced 1,845,985 vehicles and delivered 1,808,581 vehicles.
