China

Volvo announced this week that it will deploy up to 100 self-driving cars on China’s public roads. The automaker claims that the project will be “China’s most advanced autonomous driving experiment in which local drivers will test autonomous driving cars on public roads in everyday driving conditions.”
Expand
Expanding
Close

Earlier this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the automaker plans on securing a location and a local partner for a manufacturing facility in China by the middle of the 2016. A foreign company needs a local partner in order to establish a manufacturing capacity in China.

Now we learn through a recent report from Chinese media that the California-based automaker is reportedly considering a factory location in Suzhou near Shanghai (see map above).

According to the report, the Suzhou government held a meeting on March 13 to discuss a project related to Tesla and executives from the company visited the region during the following week.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla announced today a special limited time offer to get a zero-interest loan for the higher-end versions of the Model S in China. The automaker is making the offer in partnership with the China Merchants Bank and is calling it a “New Year gift” since it coincides with the Chinese New Year, which started last week.

Other than on display cars and loaners, Tesla rarely offers special discounts on its vehicles, but yet it’s the second time that Chinese customers have received a special offer from the automaker. In December last year, Tesla offered a special discount of up to 80,000 Yuan ($12,500 US) with trade-ins for a limited time.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Today, Tesla Motors opened the Chinese online design studio and order book for the Model X in China. Until now, Tesla had only allowed reservation holders in the US and Canada to configure and place an order for the new all-electric SUV, which makes China the first non-North American market to be able to order the car.
Expand
Expanding
Close

According to a new report from Nikkei, Tesla anticipates very little growth in mainland China in 2016. The news agency reports that during his current trip in Hong Kong, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that the company aims to deliver 5,000 cars this year after falling short on its 2015 delivery goal of 10,000 units in China.
Expand
Expanding
Close

A few weeks after Tesla Director of Global Communications Khobi Brooklyn confirmed that “Model 3 is on schedule” and that the company still plans to unveil the prototype in March, it’s now Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s turn to share his thoughts about the upcoming $35,000 sedan and he says he feels “pretty optimistic” about the vehicle.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is currently in Hong Kong to participate in the StartmeupHK tech forum. While in the country, the CEO took some time to share a few new information about how Tesla is doing in Hong Kong and mainland China, as well as the automaker’s future plans in the country.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla has some impressive retail locations around the world, but this one in Shenzhen, China looks particularly awesome. Located in Longhua District, the store is in a mall specialized in auto sales called “Longhua Auto City”.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Panasonic is investing 50 billion yen ($412 million) in China to build a lithium-ion battery factory aimed at the electric vehicle market, according to a new report from Nikkei. The annual capacity is projected to be the equivalent of “around 200,000 electric vehicles”, but we don’t know the average capacity per vehicle.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla rarely, if ever offer discounts at the purchase of its products, but with its ambitious goal to deliver between 17,000 and 19,000 vehicles globally in the last 3 months of the year, it seems the company resorted to offering a significant discount to new Chinese customers.

The company announced through a blog post on its Chinese website that from November 15 to December 31, it will offer up to 80,000 Yuan ($12,500 US) in discount at the purchase of a Model S under its “fuel vehicle replacement” program.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is in China this week to personally oversee the release of the Autopilot in the country. Speaking at the Tsinghua University earlier today, he said that the company will have production capacity in the country within 2 years according to a Chinese report. The timeline matches the company’s planned release of its mass market $35,000 car, the Model 3.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Chinese startup NextEV raised about half of the $1 billion it seeks ahead of launching its electric vehicle lineup according to Bloomberg. Last month we wrote about NextEV coming out of stealth to reveal its plan to “disrupt” the electric vehicle market with yet another electric supercar and today we learn that the company is extremely well-funded by big-name VC firms: Sequoia Capital and Joy Capital.
Expand
Expanding
Close

The Chinese auto giant Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co, through its Beijing Electric Vehicle Co subsidiary, opened a research and development center in Silicon Valley. The center will be dedicated to electric vehicle research.

In its current “launch phase”, the R&D center has just over 20 employees and the company expects them to develop “4 to 6 models per year”.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla is having perception issues in regard to charging their cars in Asia. Today, to further develop their charging networks in the region, they announced a partnership with Hang Lung Properties, a Hong Kong based real estate developer, in order to install destination chargers at six shopping malls in mainland China.
Expand
Expanding
Close

No battery ‘gigafactory’ information  yet but here’s the PDF. Notable is the $30,000-$35,000 base model price of the Gen 3 vehicle. Tesla’s traditionally only been able to hit the high side but so long as Federal Tax Credits are still around in 3 years, it should be a great deal especially with Tesla type specs. 
Expand
Expanding
Close

China is going to be big for Tesla according to CEO Elon Musk, who comes off a win in a Chinese court against a squatter who was trying to extort the automaker for its name. 

Tesla had resolved a trademark issue that had long prevented the company from using “Te Si La” – the Chinese name best known among Chinese consumers, which Tesla wanted to use in China. “We went to court and we won,” she said. “The court has given use right to use the name, which is why you see the Chinese name in our store now.” The name had been registered by a local businessman who had refused to give up the trademark. The U.S. company had started offering its popular Model S sedans in China, but with no Chinese language name.

We discussed the relatively low price earlier this week. Musk talked to Bloomberg on China:

Tesla’s billionaire co-founder and chief executive officer, will travel to China in late March to inaugurate the company’s entry there, he said in a phone interview.

For Tesla, “it could be as big as the U.S. market, maybe bigger. I don’t want to get overexcited about it,” Musk said yesterday. “Even without building there locally, it’s always going to be the second-biggest market after the U.S.”

After a rocky start ramping up Model S assembly in 2012, Palo Alto, California-based Tesla surprised analysts and investors this month when it said fourth-quarter deliveries were 20 percent above its target. Musk, 42, has pinned his goal of selling hundreds of thousands of electric autos annually to a global strategy in which China, Europe, Japan and other markets bolster its U.S. business.

If all goes well, Model S shipments to China can match U.S. sales by 2015, Musk said. “It’s not my firm prediction — it’s more like a low-fidelity guess.”

Expectations are high and Musk is certainly