On the early morning of September 3, Tesla delivery analyst TroyTeslike tweeted that Tesla China is expected to deliver more than 100,000 electric vehicles in September, which, if achieved, will create a whole new record. Last year’s highest monthly delivery volume at the Shanghai factory was 71,000 in December, while this year’s highest monthly delivery volume was 78,000 in June.
In June of this year, Tesla sold 78,906 electric vehicles in China, setting a monthly sales record and showing a month-on-month growth of 142%.
At the 2020 Annual Shareholders Meeting, Musk said that without the tremendous efforts of the Tesla China team, Tesla would not have achieved what it has today. Therefore, he is very grateful to the Shanghai factory in China and hopes to continue to expand its production capacity to make it a factory that produces more than one million vehicles annually.
TroyTeslike’s other tweets also indicate that the Tesla China team is continuing to work towards achieving this goal in the coming years. If Tesla is able to deliver more than 100,000 vehicles per month without encountering supply chain disruptions caused by issues such as the pandemic in the coming 10 months，Shanghai’s factory will achieve the goal of delivering more than one million vehicles annually by June 2023.
Final Words
At the beginning of this year, we launched a poll on who would achieve the goal of delivering more than one million vehicles annually first, Tesla or BYD, in China. At that time, I voted for Tesla. However, as early as August, BYD’s annual delivery volume had reached nearly 980,000 vehicles, and it seems that I was obviously wrong.
The outbreak of the pandemic in Shanghai in the first half of this year was an extremely heavy blow to the production capacity of the Tesla factory in Shanghai. However, beginning in June, when full resumption of work and production began, the factory still produced 78,000 vehicles. Therefore, Tesla China’s prediction does have a basis.
Currently, Tesla is still facing a significant backlog of orders, and delivery times for many versions of its vehicles are more than a month. Therefore, if the Shanghai factory can really produce more than 100,000 vehicles per month, it will obviously reduce the waiting time for car owners to receive their cars.
However, in 2022, traditional car manufacturers and new forces in China are both full of different product concepts to develop electric vehicles. Whether Tesla can maintain its current monthly sales volume in China in the year 2021 still remains to be seen.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.