Tesla News: Model 3 Orders Boom In China After Price Drop

As Tesla’s Model 3 Production begins to heavily ramp up at its new Shanghai factory, the company’s orders for Chinese-made vehicles is quickly outpacing supply. After dropping the price of the Standard Range + variant of the Model 3, to below the maximum to qualify for incentives, popularity took off.

The Chinese government lowered its subsidy for electric cars in July, from 24,750 yuan ($3,495), to a still sizable 22,500 yuan ($3,166). Strangely enough, Tesla had actually just increased the price of the base Model 3 in China back in April, just above the 300,000 yuan cut-off for these subsidies.

However, in a sudden change of cards, they now lowered the price of the SR+ to 294,050 yuan before subsidy, or 271,550 yuan ($38,221) after. Even though this is still by no means a cheap car, that was enough of a stimulus to incite a boom in orders. This month, orders have exceeded over 1,000 a day, largely from online orders of customers who have not even had a test-drive.

As reported on earlier this week, the Gigafactory Shanghai is averaging about 3,000 Model Ys off it’s line per week, with a short-term goal of 4,000 a week in its sites. Currently, many of the parts needed for assembly are coming from Tesla’s other factories, but as the construction on the plant continues, it shall become less dependent.

This is fantastic news, as it shows another reason why electric vehicle sales will recover from this global slump faster than ICE sales. The already standing subsidies, although smaller than they once were, may be enough to get the ball rolling.

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