Musk wants to build Tesla store in his South African homeland

$837m Of auto lease bond to be offered by Tesla

new york — It’s been almost 30 years since Elon Musk left South Africa to start a new life in North America. Now, the billionaire may be about to bring his Tesla electric cars back home.

“Probably end of next year,” the chief executive officer of Tesla replied to a South African fan on Twitter, who asked him when a store would open in the country of the businessman’s birth. “Amazing — I’m first in line when it happens!” replied the individual.

Tesla has stores across the globe, including the US, Germany, China and Australia. But it has none in Africa, which has been broadly left out of the electric-car revolution Tesla pioneered. Lower average incomes and poor power infrastructure mean gasoline-powered cars — often bought second hand — dominate most markets on the continent.

South Africa is Africa’s most industrialised economy, but it’s not immune to those challenges. Cash constraints and delayed power plants at state utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd have led to rolling blackouts. While it’s not unheard of to see an electric car on the road, they remain the preserve of the super-rich, and charging stations would be hard to come by.

Musk, 47, left South Africa for Canada after graduating from high school in Pretoria in 1989, still five years before the end of apartheid. But the self-made billionaire and founder of Space Exploration Technologies Corp is still well known there. Opening a Tesla store there could be a popular move.

Meanwhile, Tesla plans to offer $837 million of bonds backed by auto leases in its second trip to the market for asset-backed securities this year.

The electric-car maker is betting investors will look past broader market volatility to load up on the securities, which may sell as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter. The company found strong demand for its inaugural bond sale in February, and people familiar with the matter said at the time that it had plans to become a regular issuer in the ABS market.

The largest portion of the offering, a $674 million slice, may carry Aaa ratings from Moody’s Investors Service, said the people, who asked not to be named because the deal is private. Citigroup and Deutsche Bank Group are managing the sale. —