September happened to be Tesla's strongest month ever in terms of electric car sales in China, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
According to the report (via CnEVPost), the total Made-in-China (MIC) Tesla volume (retail sales in China and export) amounted to 83,135, which is 48% more than a year ago.
The previous highest result was noted in June 2022 at 78,906.
* CPCA reports wholesale shipments, not registrations/customer deliveries.
At this point we don't know yet how many of those cars were sold locally (retail sales) and how many were exported. A full report will probably be available later this week.
Nonetheless, it seems that during the first nine months of this year, Tesla sold and exported a total of over 483,000 electric cars - MIC Model 3 and MIC Model Y, produced at the Giga Shanghai plant. That's almost 64% more than a year ago at this point.
Cumulatively, the number is now close to 1.1 million, which underlines how important the Chinese plant is for the company, which so far sold over 3.2 million cars.
The record result in China also contributed a lot to the overall Q3 record of 343,830 (globally).
Only time will tell what will be the future of the Tesla Giga Shanghai plant. According to the info from July, the plant can produce more than 750,000 Model 3/Model Y annually, but after the recent upgrade, the potential number might be significantly higher - as high as 1.1-1.2 million units per year (or 100,000 per month). We would not be surprised to see an update about this in the upcoming Tesla Q3 financial report.
Higher manufacturing capacity has already allowed Tesla to cut in half the estimated delivery time for basically all MIC models in China to just several weeks on average (1-10 weeks depending on the version).
Other markets, supplied by the Tesla Giga Shanghai plant, are also benefiting and we already saw a tsunami of MIC Tesla cars waiting for deliveries.
