Of course, getting the car into Russia is one thing; charging and maintaining it there is quite another. He's installed three chargers in his company's parking lot, but none at home — with his roughly 25-mile commute, he doesn't need one there. He can’t find a company that will insure the car against damage, because no one in the country knows how to fix it. If he has minor problems, he says he'll just try importing parts and taking care of it locally. For major issues, he's confident he can ferry the car to Stockholm via St. Petersburg on a single charge, as long as he uses trains and boats along the way. Because Tesla’s cellular data connection doesn’t work in Russia, Grishin connects the car to his iPhone in hotspot mode whenever he’s driving.

"Some are saying that maybe Tesla is buying me off... I say no, I just really want to help."

Grishin, who compares the Model S’s importance to that of the original Apple iPhone, isn’t shy about his nerdery. In my half-hour chat with him, he mentions his frustration that Google doesn’t support his Glass in the Russian market and gets audibly excited when talking about upcoming plug-in hybrid cars from Porsche and BMW. Besides helming Mail.ru, he recently founded Grishin Robotics, a venture capital firm focused (naturally) on robots.

But today, it’s not internet portals or automatons that has this new-age Russian multimillionaire excited — it’s evangelizing electric cars in one of the last industrialized markets in the world to get them. "Some are saying that maybe Tesla is buying me off, working on commission because I make so much noise about Tesla in Russia. I say no, I just really want to help. I hope somehow it will help bring Tesla to Russia."