Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday spoke to billionaire Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk about ways to co-operate on space technology, Ankara said. The head of Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies Corp chatted to Mr Erdogan about ways to collaborate with the Turkish state and Turkish private institutions. "We will continue to closely follow the developments in our country and the world in the field of technology and to support every step taken in this field in order to benefit our nation," Mr Erdogan said in a Telegram post. Turkey and Mr Erdogan are keen to develop domestic electric car production as a flagship product to market the country's manufacturing sectors but also to help reduce reliance on oil imports for domestic fuel needs. Turkey announced Togg, a locally produced electric car in 2019 but analysts say the challenge for the company is rivalling long-established brands with bigger market share – such as Ford, Fiat and Renault that are already produced in Turkey. Mr Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles first went on sale in 2008 and by 2019 were the best-selling plug-in battery-run domestic car. Musk previously visited Turkey in November 2017 to discuss satellite plans with Mr Erdogan in person. The visit resulted in the launch of Turkish satellite Turksat 5A on January 8 using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral base in Florida.
