Tesla Global VP Grace Tao: Half of Global Delivery From Shanghai Gigafactory

During an online speech at the opening ceremony of the Third Qingdao Multinationals Summit on Sunday afternoon, Grace Tao, Global Vice President of Tesla, said that the acceptance of electric vehicles by Chinese users is increasing year-by-year, and the Chinese market plays an indispensable and leading role in the global new energy vehicle industry.

“The Shanghai Gigafactory is to become Tesla’s most important export base and production center. In 2021, it delivered more than 480,000 pure electric vehicles to global users, contributing half of Tesla’s global delivery and delivering high-level Chinese manufacturing to the whole world,” said Grace Tao.

She also revealed in her speech that Tesla will accelerate its localization efforts and set up R&D and data centers in China. Tao stated: “The R&D center will be Tesla’s first vehicle innovation R&D center outside the United States, creating new models that are designed by China, made in China and first sold in the world.”

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In July 2018, Tesla signed an investment agreement with the Shanghai Municipal Government and the Shanghai Lingang New Area Administrative Committee for a pure electric vehicle project. In November 2019, Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai entered pilot production. It took only 10 months for the base to be completed and put into production from scratch. In January 2020, the first batch of Model 3s manufactured by the Shanghai Gigafactory began to be delivered to users.

Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at a press conference on June 14 that the cumulative sales volume of new energy vehicles in China has risen sharply from 20,000 vehicles at the end of 2012 to 11.08 million vehicles at the end of May this year. Since 2015, the production and sales volume have ranked first in the world each year.