Although it may take Tesla a few more months to eventually deliver the first batch of its China-made Model 3, the US electric car maker has already started offline promotion on the model.
Tesla announced in a statement Tuesday that it would showcase the locally manufactured Model 3 Standard Range Plus in several local stores from Friday, November 22 on, and customers can book up for a test drive.
The vehicles are priced at a starting price of RMB 355,800 (USD 50,598) with the Autopilot driver-assistance software included, according to Tesla’s official website. The models are currently open for pre-orders to be delivered in the first quarter of 2020.
The Shanghai-built Model 3 will also appear at the Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition, according to the statement. The models showcased on Friday are only for display instead of final delivery, a Tesla salesperson told local media 36Kr.
As the delivery time draws near, Tesla is speeding up its manufacturing pipeline in the Gigafactory 3 located in Shanghai. The locally-assembled Model 3 was unveiled for the first time on November 7, and Tesla got permission from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to start mass production in its Shanghai factory on November 13.
Tesla started to build the new Shanghai factory in January, which will be its first plant outside of the US, targeting an annual capacity of 500,000 cars. The new facility was built in a record ten months, cost 65% less than comparable Model 3 production plants in the US, reported by TechWeb, a local Chinese media outlet.
As the world’s largest market for electric vehicles, China has become the second-largest market for Tesla, following the US. The California-based automaker earned USD 2.1 billion in revenue in the first nine months of this year in China, up 48% year-on-year, it said in a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
36Kr is KrASIA’s parent company.
