Tesla Sold 100,291 China-Made EVs In November, A New Record

BYD outsold Tesla in China last month with 113,915 pure electric vehicle deliveries, though.

By: Dan Mihalascu

Dec 5, 2022 at 6:28am ET

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Tesla's Gigafactory Shanghai hit an all-time record number of deliveries in November, shipping 100,291 electric vehicles to customers in China and overseas markets. That is the highest monthly sales figure since the Giga Shanghai vehicle assembly plant opened in late 2020, Xinhua reported earlier today citing Tesla China.

Breaking the 100,000 monthly delivery barrier for the first time in China also meant that Tesla posted a 40-percent increase from October 2022 and 89.7-percent increase from November 2021. The spectacular growth comes after the EV maker ramped up output at the Shanghai plant, cut prices for its best-selling models, the Model Y and Model 3, and offered incentives to Chinese buyers.

According to Tao Lin, vice president of Tesla China, the localization rate of the industrial chain of Giga Shanghai has now exceeded 95 percent, helping China's new energy vehicle (NEV) industry to develop a world-leading integrated industrial structure and robust consumption potential.

In the first 11 months of this year, Gigafactory Shanghai delivered more than 650,000 vehicles, far exceeding last year's total of 484,130, said Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). The CPCA reports wholesale shipments, not registrations/customer deliveries.

Gallery: Tesla Giga Shanghai (Tesla Gigafactory 3)

The official added that the Shanghai plant's annual sales for 2022 could hopefully hit 750,000 units. Cui also said that from January through November, China's NEV sales exceeded 5.7 million units, anticipating that production and sales of such vehicles could top 6.5 million for the entire 2022 calendar year.

However, Tesla was not China's NEV sales leader in November, as that distinction went to local automaker BYD, which sold 229,942 electrified vehicles last month—113,915 pure electric vehicles and 116,027 plug-in hybrids.

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That's three times more than a year earlier and more than double Tesla's tally (if PHEV and BEV sales are counted together), according to data from the China Passenger Car Association. For the first four weeks of November, BYD was actually the top-selling car brand overall in China (ICE and NEV sales combined), outperforming Volkswagen Passenger Cars, data from China Merchants Bank International via Reuters shows.

BYD's result highlights the pressure on legacy brands to accelerate their electrification efforts in the world's largest auto market, which is also the largest and most competitive global market for electric vehicles.