Tesla to Offer Free Charging Stations All Over China

Feb 09, 2015 12:05 PM EST | Matt Mercuro

Tesla Motors has plans to install free charging stations all over China in an attempt to increase sales in the world's biggest auto market.

Company President of China operations Zhu Xiatong announced recently that Tesla would like to launch some supercharging stations all over the country and at the homes of car owners. Both services would be free to consumers, according to Stocks.org.

Zhu said that Tesla Motors wants to announce to the world who the EV maker is and how much it cares about its customers.

"Musk's high hope for us is like a parent for his or her child. We have to tell the market who is Tesla," said Zhu to ZDNet.

Tesla has been facing a number of issues in China over the past couple of years. The company said back in January that its 4Q results for 2014 failed to show any significant performance. Sales were so bad that chief executive officer of Tesla, Elon Musk, recently said that he wasn't pleased with the way Tesla had been handling its affairs in the Chinese market, according to Reuters.

Musk added that Tesla's performance in China wasn't up to the mark, and management needs to do something to correct the balance.

Company stocks fell by 66.85 percent after Ricardo Reyes, the chief for communications, said to the media that the reason why Tesla hasn't been able to perform well in China was due to Tesla's failure to address the concerns of customers.

The Palo Alto-based company is now looking to help ease the minds of consumers in China who are worried that the range of electric vehicles isn't on par with their gasoline counterparts by offering free charging services.

Consumers have also complained about how hard it is to find a charging station in order to charge up their vehicles. Now they won't have to search for one as the company will install fee charging stations at owner's homes.

Tesla still plans to reach a 500,000-vehicle annual sales benchmark by 2020, though it will need some help from its planned $35,000 Tesla Model 3. The car is scheduled to be released around 2017.

Tesla stock was trading down 1.64 percent at $217.36 at the closing bell on Friday.

See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?

© 2024 Auto World News, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Get the Most Popular Autoworld Stories in a Weekly Newsletter

Join the Conversation

Real Time Analytics