China’s EV market has become one of the most brutally competitive automotive environments on earth.
Domestic brands are fast, aggressive on price, and deeply familiar with local consumer preferences
For a foreign automaker trying to hold ground there, the math gets harder every quarter. Tesla ($TSLA) just reported its June China numbers, and they tell a story about a company finding traction in a market where foreign automakers rarely gain ground. What Tesla’s June and second quarter China numbers actually show China-made deliveries of the Model 3 and Model Y rose 24.4% year on year in June to 89,091 vehicles, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association cited by Reuters.
June marked the eighth consecutive month of year-on-year growth for Tesla’s Shanghai output. June followed an even stronger May, when China-made sales climbed 39.4% year on year to 85,982 units. Two months of gains at that pace are hard to explain away as seasonal noise.