The July sales results for the Made-in-China (MIC) Model 3/Model Y in China caused a lot of comments, which forced Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk to speak.
According to Elon Musk, the local sales numbers have nothing to do with demand. The company simply allocates most of the production in the first month of a quarter for export.
We guess that the biggest export market is Europe and once the ships reach their destination, we will see another spike in new Tesla registrations in the last month of a quarter.
“Tesla makes cars for export in first half of quarter & for local market in second half.”
This cycle repeats and it seems that it will continue to repeat in the future, which means that the best measure is by quarter and, of course, year-over-year.
Not only that, it might also mean that the export and local sales volume will be similar (assuming that the first half is for export and the second half for the local market).
Moreover, Tesla’s boss noted that the Giga Shanghai plant operates under “extreme supply chain limitations.”
In the past three months, the output was almost flat at around 33,000 units (according to CPCA data). That’s a rate of under 400,000 units a year. Most recently, the manufacturing capacity expanded to beyond 450,000 a year.
The limitations are caused by global semiconductor chip shortages. Elon Musk points out at Renesas and Bosch.
“As publicly disclosed, we are operating under extreme supply chain limitations regarding certain “standard” automotive chips.
Most problematic by far are Renesas & Bosch.”
Manufacturing constraints affect also other manufacturers. Just a few days ago, we reported about the six-week delays for Ford Mustang Mach-E. In such circumstances, Tesla’s production in China at 33,000 a month is actually quite high.
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