Elon Musk Wants Tesla to Be Big — or Bigger — in Japan

Chester Dawson and Tsuyoshi Inajima, Bloomberg News

A Tesla Inc. Model S electric vehicle displayed at a Tesla Motors Japan store in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has arrived in Japan for his first known visit in nine years. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. is not big in Japan, as the saying goes. And Elon Musk is irritated with low sales in what is still one of the world’s largest car-buying countries.

“There are some geographies where our market share is remarkably low, like Japan,” he said on a fourth-quarter earnings conference call Wednesday. “We should at least have a market share proportionate to, say, other non-Japanese carmakers like Mercedes or BMW, which we do not currently have.”

Musk blamed a “lack of awareness,” something he said he’s heard from friends in Japan.

Japan’s overall imports of electric vehicles rose 60% to 22,890 units in 2023, according to the Japan Automobile Importers Association. But EV imports in the category including Tesla models fell 6.8% last year.

A lack of ambition isn’t the issue. Musk once predicted Japan would become the company’s largest market outside the US.

Read More: For Elon Musk, Success is Proving Elusive in Japan’s Car Market

(Updates from fourth paragraph with data from trade group.)