Tesla Cuts China Delivery Time for Rear-Wheel Drive Model Y to 1-4 Weeks

Tesla China announced a new round of delivery time adjustments through its website on August 31. The estimated wait for the rear-wheel drive version of its Model Y has been reduced to 1-4 weeks from the previous 4-8 weeks, indicating that the firm’s Shanghai Gigafactory is shifting its capacity to local deliveries.

On August 18, Tesla reduced the estimated delivery time for the Model 3 and Model Y in China. Data from the official website at the time showed that the estimated delivery time for both Model 3 versions had been shortened to 12-16 weeks. The expected delivery time for the rear-wheel drive Model Y was shortened to 4-8 weeks, and the expected delivery time for the long-range Model Y and the high-performance Model Y was shortened to 16-20 weeks and 12-16 weeks, respectively.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously posted on his personal social media accounts that Tesla’s production capacity in the first half of each quarter favored exports, while the second half favored local deliveries. As such, it seems the supply of capacity at the Shanghai Gigafactory should also shift to the domestic market, now that the second half of Q3 2022 has arrived.

According to sales data from the China Passenger Car Association, as of July, Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory delivered 323,000 vehicles to global users this year, including 206,000 units for the Chinese market. This means that in the first seven months of the year, the delivery volume of the Shanghai Gigafactory reached two-thirds the total volume last year, as it delivered more than 480,000 pure electric vehicles to global users in 2021.

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Tesla’s earnings report shows that its Shanghai Gigafactory has a capacity of more than 750,000 units per year, the highest among all the firm’s factories worldwide. Tesla expects that recent equipment upgrades will allow the Shanghai plant to continue to increase its productivity. Musk said during an earnings call that the company is on track for record production in the second half of the year.

Furthermore, according to data released by Tesla, in the first half of 2022, Tesla China owners have used the Tesla charging network to drive a total of more than 2.8 billion kilometers, an increase of 61% year-on-year. The distance is equivalent to more than 70,000 laps around the earth, achieving an estimated CO2 emissions reduction of more than 650,000 tons.