Tesla to start made-in-China Model 3 deliveries to customers on Jan 7

Tesla announced that they are going to start made-in-China Model 3 deliveries to customers at an event at Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai on January 7.

Earlier this week, Tesla held an event for the start of made-in-China Model 3 deliveries to employees.

Over the last few weeks prior to the event, we have observed Tesla steadily producing and shipping made-in-China Model 3 vehicles out of Gigafactory 3 while it was awaiting sale approval for the new vehicle.

When they officially started deliveries to employees, we witnessed Model 3 vehicles overflowing Gigafactory 3’s parking lot.

Now Tesla told Chinese media outlets that they will hold an event at Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai on January 7 for the first customer deliveries.

In China, the Model 3 Standard Range Plus with Autopilot starts at ¥355,800 (about $50,000) before incentives.

Tesla has been taking pre-orders for a while now, but the automaker hasn’t disclosed the number of orders it has received.

The automaker recently confirmed that Gigafactory 3 is already producing ‘more than 1,000 Model 3 per week.

Electrek’s Take

This is interesting. It means that Tesla hasn’t delivered cars to customers since the December 30 ceremony despite having already shipped a lot of cars from Gigafactory 3 over the last few weeks and planning to deliver all cars in inventory if possible.

It would mean that Tesla has been only delivering vehicles to employees over the last few days.

This is not entirely surprising since I am sure many Tesla employees were waiting for the made-in-China Model 3 to buy a car and Tesla has over 3,200 employees in the country.

I could see Tesla having up to 1,000 cars to deliver to employees.

But now customer deliveries are starting and we expect that rate to increase fast if Tesla is already producing more than 1,000 vehicles per week.

The automaker was planning to reach 3,000 units per week early in 2020.

Many people thought this was a fantasy since they only started construction a year ago, but now it is looking like an achievable goal.