Uruguay Is Becoming an Unofficial Tesla Hotspot

Uruguay is becoming a burgeoning Tesla hotspot despite the EV company having no official presence in the country.

Uruguay is not a Tesla-supported country, with no dealerships or online sales. Any vehicles registered in the country have been imported through unofficial channels.

Imports are cheapest from China, where half of all Teslas are manufactured, Ramiro Duer, owner of AutoImport, tells Rest of the World. He has imported 80 Teslas from China in the past year through a confidential agreement with Chinese partners.

They purchase the vehicle from Chinese Teslas dealerships, and work with shipping agents to find a spot on a ship and complete the paperwork to ship to Uruguay. The process takes several weeks, and the vehicles arrive with the clock set to China Standard Time.

It’s unclear how many Teslas are in Uruguay; the numbers are all over the place. The first, a Model 3, arrived in 2020. By 2021, there were 42 registered in the region, Bloomberg reports. One government agency says Uruguay imported only 80 Teslas between 2020 and 2024, 50 of which came from the US. However, the number is likely higher if Duer says he alone imported 80 from China in the past year.

“I have a 2021 US Model Y LR in Uruguay, South America, and there are more than 100 Teslas here,” writes one Redditor in 2022. “Of course there is a risk but I am very glad I bought it.” They installed a SIM card for connectivity, and noted that third-party mechanics in Mexico have learned to repair Teslas. Getting parts can take months.

“In Costa Rica we have 100+ imported Teslas,” adds another commenter.

In the wealthy coastal town of Punta del Este, Uruguay, “Teslas have become a regular sight in school parking lots and outside bars,” according to Rest of the World.

Tesla’s inroads to South America have been slow. It set up its first dealership in Chile in February 2024, Reuters reports. Its first Supercharger in the region went up this month. Meanwhile, sales for Chinese EV giant BYD are booming in Uruguay. BYD became the second top-selling brand there in July, up 879% year-over-year and has 26 official dealerships in Uruguay, which has “a robust public charging network, tax cuts for EVs, and minimal bureaucratic hurdles for car imports,” Rest of the World says.

Tesla Cybertrucks have been discovered in other far-flung places, such as two that were seized by border control being smuggled into Russia. In September, a Russian military leader accused Tesla CEO Elon Musk of disabling his Cybertruck remotely, CNN reports. He had outfitted it with a machine gun for combat.

Musk denied sending the Chechen leader a Cybertruck. “Are you seriously so retarded that you think I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general?” he said in an X post. It was likely imported.