Tesla sold a record-high 70,847 Chinese-made cars in December – the CPCA

People walk past a showroom outside Tesla China’s headquarters at China Central Mall in Beijing, China on July 11, 2018. REUTERS / Jason Lee

BEIJING, January 11 (Reuters) – US electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) sold 70,847 Chinese-made cars in December, the highest monthly price since it began production in Shanghai in 2019, data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) showed on Tuesday.

Tesla’s December sales, which included 245 for export, were almost three times the amount achieved in the same month last year and 34% higher than sales in November. read more

It also brought Tesla’s total sales of China-made cars for last year to at least 473,078, according to Reuters’ calculations of CPCA’s data, which before April did not publish figures for Tesla’s China-made car exports.

This is around half of the 936,000 vehicles the American car manufacturer delivered globally last year.

Tesla’s Shanghai plant, which began supplying vehicles in late 2019, makes electric Model 3 sedans and Model Y sports cars for national and international markets, including Germany and Japan.

The automaker, which has been able to overcome supply chain problems experienced by rivals to post record deliveries in the quarter, said during the third quarter results in October that the Shanghai plant’s potential annual production exceeded 450,000 vehicles. [ read more ]

Tu Le, Beijing-based CEO of Sino Auto Insights, said that figures for December showed that the Tesla brand in China remained strong and that it was also operationally “impressive” given that the Shanghai plant had the capacity to produce around 42,000 vehicles in the month average.

“They were well above that number in December. And this despite the lack of chips and batteries that other electric car manufacturers handled.”

China’s electric car market is dominated by domestic brands, including BYD (002594.SZ) and Wuling – a local brand that is part of General Motors (GM.N). Tesla is only the foreign brand in the top 10, according to Shanghai-based consulting company Automobility.

The CPCA also said that the Chinese electric car manufacturer Nio Inc (NIO.N) delivered 10,489 cars last month, a year-on-year increase of 49.7%, while Xpeng Inc (9868.HK) delivered 16,000 cars. Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) said it sold more than 13,787 IDs. series of electric cars in China in December, the fourth month in a row there ID. family has delivered more than 10,000 units in China.

The CPCA said that passenger car sales in China in December amounted to 2.14 million, a decrease of 7.7% from the previous year.

Reporting by Sophie Yu, Brenda Goh, Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Louise Heavens

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