After the early corona virus restrictions and the subsequent easing in China, Tesla apparently increased its sales there rapidly this March compared to the previous month. A total of 10,160 Tesla electric cars were sold in the country this March, according to an agency report, the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) said. This would be an increase of more than 150 percent compared to February 2020, when 3900 Teslas were sold in China according to the CPCA.
Share of local Tesla Model 3 unclear
After the official start of Model 3 deliveries from the new Gigafactory in Shanghai, considerable customer interest was initially reported at the beginning of this year. Tesla branches in several Chinese cities should be regularly overcrowded and production in the local Gigafactory should have sold out early in the quarter. The coronavirus epidemic, which became more dramatic in China at the end of January, then forced Tesla production and physical sales to stop for almost two weeks, but both have now started again.
How many of the 10,160 Teslas reported by CPCA for March 2020 were locally produced (so far only the standard range plus model 3 comes from China, soon one with a larger battery is to follow) is not clear from the information now reported by Reuters. Recently, however, there was talk of a production capacity of 3000 Model 3s per week from the Chinese Tesla factory, so that it could have served all sales in China purely in terms of calculations. It should make up at least a large part, because the local Model 3 costs significantly less than the all-wheel drive and performance versions imported from the USA.
Tesla’s China share at 19 percent
At the same time, it is clear that China made a significant contribution to Tesla’s surprisingly good sales in the first quarter of 2020. In total, the company reported a good 88,000 deliveries worldwide for the quarter, so that the share of China is now almost 19 percent; According to CPCA figures, a total of 16,680 Tesla electric cars were sold in China by the end of March, Reuters reports.
According to the agency, Tesla has never sold as many of its electric cars in China in a month as it did this March, although overall car sales fell 40 percent year-over-year. The situation could be similar in other important markets in the first quarter of this year. For the United States, for example, several automakers have already reported double-digit sales declines.
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