Tonight I spotted a post on Twitter that suggests Tesla is gearing up their social media presence in Australia (and New Zealand) with a new Instagram account.
While it is strange they’d add an account on a rival platform to the Musk-owned Twitter, Tesla needs to promote electric vehicles to customers across the world regardless of the social platform they chose.
The official @TeslaMotors is verified and has used Instagram for years, attracting more than 9.4M followers and regularly posts to IG Reels.
The new @tesla_aunz Instagram account has just 1 post, from 1 hour ago. The post includes the text ‘Australia and New Zealand, say hello to @tesla_aunz #Tesla_AUNZ‘.
This video post includes a few shots from Australia, including the Sydney harbour bridge and the Great Pacific Drive, but also includes plenty of standard press shots from Tesla’s media site.
Update
I have now confirmed this is indeed an official Tesla account for Australia and New Zealand. This is great news for our local region which is likely to now get some more locally focused content.
If we dive into the account details, we find the @tesla_aunz Instagram account links to 4 legitimate Tesla websites, Tesla.com/en_au, Tesla.com/en_nz, tesla.com/en_au/drive and tesla.com/en_au/updates. So far, so good, but it’s the next piece that raises suspicion.
The account was created in May 2023, and at the time of posting, has 271 followers. Here’s where things get weird.. it appears the account has changed its username 5 times in the past 90 days.
After seeing this, I started reviewing their existing followers. Typically official accounts are first followed by employees or other corporate accounts ahead of them being found publicly or being shared by the primary corp account. In this instance, the followers appear to be quite random and none are verified.
I did send them a message and got a like, so there is an active human at the end of this account.
Tesla recently increased their recruitment efforts in Australia, advertising a number of ADAS driver positions to help with the localisation and testing of FSD in Australia. The company has also been setting the sales charts alive, with the Model Y quickly becoming the best passenger vehicle in the country, just months after launch.
Australia and New Zealand are certainly smaller markets than the US or Europe but still represent a significant market that needs to and is, transitioning to electric vehicles.
