China-built Tesla Model 3 with its brand name in Chinese characters is unveiled at a Tesla store on November 22, 2019 in Shanghai, China. China’s homegrown Tesla Model 3 will be sold at a starting price of 355,800 yuan (about 50,560 US dollars).
Zhang Hengwei | China News Service | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Tesla is producing its Model 3 electric vehicles at a rate of 28 per hour at its new Shanghai plant, or more than 1,000 per week given 10 hours on shift each day, according to a report from the Global Times. The plant was built and began vehicle assembly in just under a year.
The company started delivering the Model 3s to its own employees in China at a ceremony that was live-streamed on Weibo, the Chinese social network, yesterday.
Elon Musk’s electric car and clean energy company began work on the $2 billion plant just under a year ago– setting a record for global automakers in China from ground breaking to start of production.
The China-made Model 3s are selling for around 355,800 yuan (or $50,000) before subsidies.
Tesla intends to make 3,000 vehicles per week at Shanghai “in the near future,” Tesla executives told the Global Times.
Some 30% of the China-made Model 3 parts are sourced in China today, the report says. Tesla aims for that number to climb to 80% by mid-2020. Made-in-China Model 3s should be fully “localized” by the end of 2020, with all parts supplied by Chinese companies.
Tesla sold about 30,000 Model 3s this year in China, according to the report. Tesla has not independently confirmed the numbers to CNBC. The Global Times, where they appeared, is the English-language version of People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
On Monday, Tesla shares dipped after Cowen analyst Jeffrey Osborne wrote that he expects the company’s full-year delivery total to come in below the low end of guidance, amid disappointing Model S/X results. “We believe Tesla will deliver ~356k vehicles for the year, just slightly missing the low end of the 360-400k delivery guide for the year,” he wrote.
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