Tesla starts selling cars in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, a country where on a 900-kilometre (559 mile) stretch of its main east-west highway linking the capital Riyadh and the holy city of Mecca there isn't a single charging station.
Electric vehicle sales in the kingdom totalled just 2,000 last year, according to Telemetry analyst Sam Abuelsamid, fewer than Tesla sold between breakfast and dinner on an average day.
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But Saudi Arabia has huge plans for EVs that Tesla has not been able to tap, partly because of a feud between its billionaire CEO Elon Musk and the kingdom's powerful Public Investment Fund sovereign wealth fund that dates back to 2018.
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