Tesla registers record sales of China-made vehicles
Tesla sold a record 70,847 China-made vehicles in December, the highest number since the US company started manufacturing in Shanghai in 2019.
According to data from the China Passenger Car Association, the manufacturer’s sales tripled compared with the previous year, also going up 34 per cent on November levels. The latest production influx pushed the total number of China-made Tesla vehicles to around 473,078, half of its global production, Reuters reported.
Commenting on the news, Sino Auto Insights’ managing director called the figures “impressive”, especially given the ongoing supply chain issues.
“They were well over that number in December. And this is despite the chip and battery shortages that other EV makers dealt with,” he told Reuters.
The news comes a few days after Tesla’s boss and serial entrepreneur Elon Musk was lambasted for opening a Tesla showroom in Xijiang, a Chinese province known for having a majority Uyghur Muslim population that is subject to human rights abuses.
Announcing the opening via Chinese social media, the move attracted criticisms from several organisations, City PM reported.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations urged Tesla and Musk to “cease what amounts to economic support for genocide.”
“No American corporation should be doing business in a region that is the focal point of a campaign of genocide targeting a religious and ethnic minority,” the group’s communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, said in a statement.
Unlike Tesla, Volkswagen announced today it had come short of its sales goals in China, delivering 70,625 electric vehicles instead of reaching between 80,000 and 100,000.
The automotive giant said that while the goal remains to double sales, the plan is “not currently secured by the semiconductor supplies that we currently see.”