Tesla’s Elon Musk Might Have Gone Back on His Word, but It’s Working in China
Rewind to 2019 when Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) broke ground on its Giga Shanghai. Musk made it pretty clear at the time the factory was to produce more affordable versions of the Model 3 and Y for China. Sometime later, Tesla’s CEO added, “Affordable cars must be made on same continent as customers.” Things haven’t quite gone according to plan thanks to China’s domestic automakers rapidly developing their electric vehicle (EV) technology and a brutal price war that has forced all automakers to go back to the drawing board. Despite the change of plans, Tesla’s exports from China are surging, and it’s absolutely the right move. But there are a couple of things for investors to know.
Fast-forward to today. Tesla sold 381,088 vehicles in China through the first three quarters of 2026, a nearly 12% decline from the prior year, according to data from the CPCA. In a flip-flop of growth, however, Tesla’s exports from Giga Shanghai have more than doubled to 361,972 vehicles, nearly matching its domestic sales in the country. Through September, Tesla’s exports as a share of wholesale jumped 2,000 basis points, or 20 percentage points, to 49%. Thanks to growth in Tesla’s exports, even amid the brutal domestic Chinese automotive market, Tesla China’s total wholesale volume jumped nearly 23% to 743,060 compared to the prior year.
To be fair, while the explosive exports growth is just what the doctor ordered for Tesla in China, it’s also the lowest domestic retail sales through the first nine months the EV maker has posted over the past four years. This also isn’t just a Tesla problem, and the pain has been felt across the board with more and more Chinese brands racing to leave the market and expand overseas, especially as hybrids can avoid some of the tariffs Europe set for Chinese EVs.
Source: www.fool.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.