(ATF) Tesla said on Monday January 18 in a tweet that it has started delivering its Shanghai-made Model Y electric sports utility vehicles to customers in China.
The company obtained permission to start selling the crossover electric vehicles (EVs) from the Chinese government in November and has set a starting price of 339,900 yuan ($52,400).
The price is lower than Tesla’s Chinese rival Nio charges for its comparable EC6 vehicle.
The Model Y is the second Tesla vehicle made in Shanghai after the Model 3 sedan, which the company started delivering a year ago.
The Model 3 was the bestselling electric vehicle in China last year, with more than 138,000 sold.
The Chinese government has set a target for EVs to account for 20% of auto sales by 2025, or around 5 million vehicles. The country’s EV market is set to grow strongly over the next few years in line with that objective. Several Chinese EV startups aiming to compete with Tesla in the country have recently unveiled, or expressed plans to unveil, new cars-including Nio Inc’s luxury ET7 sedan.
The Model Y is seen in a Tesla showroom in Beijing on Jan 5, 2021. Photo: Reuters.
Tesla is due to report fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday February 3. Wall Street analysts expect 2020 to mark the first time the company achieved a full-year profit, aided by sales in China.
Tesla’s crossover vehicle move comes just over a week after electric car startup Nio unveiled its first sedan, a car that was expected to be the biggest rival for Tesla’s existing Model S.
The all-electric sedan ET7, released by Nio founder and CEO William Li at the Nio Day ‘2020’ in Chengdu, is the first sedan in Nio’s lineup following the company’s SUV and crossover models and its EP9 hypercar. It is billed by the company as its “first autonomous driving model”.
China’s auto industry continued its recovery in December, after sales slumped for full year 2020 amid the pandemic-led downturn. Sharp growth is expected in 2021.
The Nio ET7 will start at 448,000 yuan ($69,171) before government subsidies and come with a 70-kilowatt hour (kWh) battery pack that promises about 500 kilometers (310 miles) of range.
A 100 kWh model with 700 km range is priced at 506,000 yuan.
If customers choose to pay for battery services based on a 980 yuan monthly subscription fee, the entry-level variant costs 378,000 yuan.
Deliveries will start from the first quarter of 2022, Nio said in a press release.
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