BEIJING (Reuters) – Tesla Inc. sold 70,847 Chinese-made vehicles in December, the highest monthly rate since manufacturing began in Shanghai in 2019, data from the China Passenger Car Association showed on Tuesday.
Tesla’s December sales, including 245 for export, were almost three times the amount in the same month last year and 34% higher than November volume.
It also brought Tesla’s total sales of Chinese-made electric vehicles in 2021 to at least 473,078, according to Reuters calculations of CPCA data, which prior to April did not release Chinese-made Tesla export figures. .
The tally represents about half of the 936,000 vehicles the US automaker delivered worldwide last year.
Tesla’s Shanghai factory, which began delivering vehicles in late 2019, manufactures the Model 3 sedan and Model Y crossover for domestic and international markets, including Germany and Japan.
The automaker, which was able to overcome supply chain difficulties faced by rivals to post record quarterly deliveries, said after the release of its third-quarter results in October that the potential annual production of the Shanghai plant exceeded 450,000 vehicles.
Tu Le, managing director of Beijing-based Sino Auto Insights, said the December figures showed the Tesla brand in China remained strong and was also “impressive” operationally given that the Shanghai factory had the capacity to manufacture approximately 42,000 vehicles per month. on average.
“They were well above that number in December. And that’s despite chip and battery shortages that other EV makers have faced.”
China’s electric vehicle market is dominated by domestic brands such as BYD and Wuling, a local brand that is part of General Motors. Tesla is only the foreign brand in the top 10, according to Shanghai-based consultancy Automobility.
The CPCA also said Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio Inc. delivered 10,489 cars last month, a 50% year-on-year increase, while Xpeng Inc. delivered 16,000 vehicles. Volkswagen Group said it sold more than 13,787 ID series electric vehicles in China in December, the fourth consecutive month in which the ID family generated deliveries of more than 10,000 in China.
The CPCA said December passenger car sales in China totaled 2.14 million, down 7.7 percent from a year earlier.
