Report: Tesla's Plan To Restore Full Production In China Is Delayed A Week

But things are getting better and the company sent another transport of over 4,000 cars to Europe.

Tesla Giga Shanghai: Exterior (Tesla Q4 2021 report)

Mark Kane

By: Mark Kane

May 16, 2022 at 8:32am ET

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The Tesla Giga Shanghai plant in China is slowly resuming and increasing production, but it might take more time than initially expected to achieve full scale again.

Reuters reports that according to an internal memo, Tesla's plan to restore production to levels before the latest COVID-19 lockdown is delayed by at least a week.

According to the report, based on unofficial data, Tesla originally aimed to increase output to 2,600 Model 3/Model Y cars per day from May 16, but it had to stick with a single shift operation and about 1,200 cars per day. The new timeline to reach 2,600 cars per day is May 23.

"...the latest memo said that it plans to stick to one shift for its Shanghai plant for the current week with a daily output of around 1,200 units. It also said that it would now aim to increase output to 2,600 units per day from May 23."

There are many issues related to production in Shanghai right now. There are parts supply challenges and workers must live and sleep near production lines to even be allowed to run a factory.

But there is positive news as well. According to media reports, with the number of COVID-19 cases decreasing, Shanghai intends to fully reopen from June 1 to mid-to-late June.

Tesla's production and sales of electric cars in China collapsed in April due to the lockdown. But things appear to be improving now. Recently the company sent 4,767 Made-in-China Model 3/Model Y to Europe (Slovenia) and on Sunday, another transport of 4,027 cars was sent to Belgium.

What do you think?

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We guess that those might be cars produced in April (reportedly 10,757 units) or early May.

Considering that Tesla's wholesale shipments (retail sales in China and export) were above 60,000 per month (average from Q4 2021 and Q1 2022), the lockdown probably will cost the company a six-digit number of cars (stopped production or production at a lowered rate).