Tesla Shipments in China Drop as Exports From Shanghai Jump
Tesla China Shipments to Local Market Drop While Exports Surge
(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. shipments of China-built vehicles to the local market plunged in October as the electric-vehicle pioneer prioritizes exports at the start of each quarter before ramping up local deliveries.
Elon Musk’s EV maker reported domestic shipments of 13,725 units last month, down 74% from September. But the automaker exported 40,666 cars from its Shanghai factory, more than 10 times the month prior, China’s Passenger Car Association said Monday, taking total China shipments to 54,391, versus 56,006 in September.
Tesla typically prioritizes overseas shipments in the first half of the quarter, before increasing local deliveries in the latter half of the period.
China is a very important market for Tesla, with Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, saying recently that it remains his “linchpin to the overall bull thesis,” worth $300 per share to the Tesla story for 2022. Stock in U.S.-traded Tesla has surged more than 1,000% since early last year although was down as much as 7.2% in pre-market trading Monday after a Twitter poll initiated by Musk said he should sell 10% of his stake.
“While PR and safety headwinds were front and center in China earlier this year, we’ve seen this demand trend reverse aggressively in a bullish way into year-end, with the company now on an around 50,000 monthly run-rate for China in the fourth quarter that could ramp further into early 2022,” Ives said in a note over the weekend.
Overall retail sales of cars, sport utility vehicles and multipurpose vehicles and minivans slid 14.1% in October from a year earlier to 1.74 million units as the broader industry continues to struggle with the global chip shortage, the PCA data showed.
Deliveries of new-energy vehicles, which include EVs and plug-in hybrids, rose more than 140% from a year earlier to 321,000 units. Volkswagen AG’s ID series electric vehicle sales have risen for five straight months and exceeded 10,000 for the first time in September, heralding a potential new rival for Tesla in what is now its second-largest market. ID series sales were 12,736 last month.
“New-energy-vehicle sales in October show that they’ve become the focus of automakers’ development and concentrated key resources including chips,” PCA Secretary General Cui Dongshu said. He said Tesla’s robust export numbers “demonstrates the strong competitiveness of China-made products.”
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With assistance from Bloomberg