Tesla prepares to start electric car operations in Chile – 11/10/2023 – Market

Tesla is preparing to start operations in Chile, a country with the largest lithium reserves in the world, but which still has low penetration of electric cars.

The company has registered the trademark Tesla Chile SpA, according to a publication in Chile’s Official Gazette dated September 28. The unit can carry out activities such as selling and manufacturing cars and activities related to “energy and electricity generation”.

The electric vehicle maker also has vacancies for three positions in the country’s capital, Santiago, including a general manager in the country “to help launch the market,” according to posts on LinkedIn.

Registration for commercial activities, however, does not guarantee that Tesla will move forward with these plans, but it does open a legal path to do so.

A Tesla team visited lithium extraction sites and an energy storage project in Chile in February, according to the company’s impact report.

“These trips focused on issues related to water use, indigenous peoples’ rights and the use of new technologies, such as Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE), to extract lithium more efficiently, reducing land, water and energy use” , said Tesla. Lithium is a key component in the rechargeable batteries that power electric vehicles.

Tesla would join its biggest electric vehicle competitor, BYD, in Chile. The Chinese company launched its Seal sedan in Santiago last month as part of an expansion into Latin America. BYD has plans for a cathode factory in Chile after gaining access to preferential prices for lithium mined by SQM.

Tesla would face the same barriers that other electric vehicle sellers have faced in the region. Electric vehicles are, on average, 2.5 times more expensive than internal combustion vehicles, according to BloombergNEF.

Electric car sales represented just 2.5% of total vehicle sales in the first nine months of the year, according to Chile’s industry association.

A search on Tesla’s website only shows job openings in Mexico and Chile, but no actual presence in South America. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced in March that Tesla would build a new factory in Monterrey, the company’s first factory south of the US border.

Chile also has some of the best conditions in the world for generating renewable energy, with sunny deserts in the north and strong winds in the south. However, the country’s renewable energy boom has been hampered by transmission bottlenecks and a lack of storage.