Electric vehicles: Tesla ships Shanghai-made Model Y overseas for first time, delivering more than 8,000 units to Europe
- The American carmaker’s Gigafactory 3 shipped 8,210 Model Y sports-utility vehicles to Europe in July, the company said on Monday
- Tesla launched the Model Y, its second production model, in China on January 1 this year, drawing massive orders from mainland Chinese drivers
The Gigafactory 3 in the Lingang free-trade zone shipped 8,210 Model Ys to Europe in July, the company said in a statement on Monday. Tesla recently said the plant has become its main vehicle export hub.
“It goes without saying that the Shanghai Gigafactory is playing a strategic role in Tesla’s global layout,” said Tesla in the statement.
“Increasing exports from the Shanghai factory will eventually help Tesla expand its manufacturing capacity and fine-tune the supply chain here,” said Gao Shen, an independent analyst in Shanghai. “It remains to be seen whether [Tesla boss] Musk will strengthen R&D capabilities in the world’s largest EV market in the near future.”
Tesla’s Shanghai factory also exported 16,137 Model 3 cars in July, taking the total export volume soaring through the 20,000 mark for the first time, to 24,347 units.
The vehicles are bound for markets including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong, according to Monday’s statement.
Tesla broke ground on its US$2 billion Shanghai factory in January 2019 and started assembling Model 3s there at the end of that year.
The plant, the first car manufacturing facility to be fully owned by a foreign investor in mainland China, reflects the country’s ambitions of turning itself into the global leader in the EV sector.
After it started delivering the first batch of Model 3s at the beginning of 2020, Tesla launched its second production model, the Model Y, in China on January 1 this year. The new vehicle drew massive orders from mainland Chinese drivers.
“While we experienced minor interruptions due to supply chain challenges and factory upgrades, production in Shanghai remained strong,” the Palo Alto, California-based company said in its second-quarter earnings report last month. “Due to strong US demand and global average cost optimisation, we have completed the transition of Gigafactory Shanghai as the primary vehicle export hub.”
The Shanghai factory accounted for about 45 per cent of Tesla’s global sales, according to analysts.
Carmakers operating in China have emerged as the top beneficiaries of the mainland’s efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.
When the coronavirus was largely contained by the middle of last year, their operations resumed, allowing them to secure a supply of car components earlier than their global peers and avoid the worst of a global shortage of semiconductors.
