Tesla's Model 3 is now on sale in South Korea and it's cheaper than you'd think
Thanks to aggressive government subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles, a Model 3 in South Korea is even more reasonably priced than it would be in the US.
Tesla's volume-selling Model 3 is continuing its slow, steady march across the globe, this time entering the market in South Korea, according to a report Tuesday by The Korea Times.
While it's cool that folks in South Korea can now buy the Model 3, the truly interesting part is the pricing. See, the Model 3 Standard Range Plus will start at around 52 million won, which is roughly equivalent to $43,120. For reference, here in the US that car starts at $38,990 before incentives.
Incentives are where things start to get really interesting for Korean buyers. The national government offers an EV subsidy of 9 million won (approximately $7,465) and then on top of that there are subsidies from the provincial governments that are worth up to 11 million won (roughly $9,120).
In case you managed to bomb math class, that works out to a potential purchase price for a base model Tesla Model 3 of under $27,000. That's cheap, in case you hadn't noticed.
Surely there's some downside that makes EVs unattractive in South Korea, right? Maybe there's no Supercharging network? Wrong. There are 22 Superchargers and 172 Level 2 chargers in Tesla's network there. For reference, South Korea is slightly smaller than the state of Oklahoma, which, for the record, only boasts six Superchargers.
While the Model 3 is on sale in South Korea right now, the first customer deliveries likely won't take place until Q4 of this year.
