Rhea Liu
Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, announced today at a press conference held in Beijing that Tesla has sold 3,025 cars in China for the first three quarters of 2015.
According to an earlier address by Musk to investors, Tesla delivered 33,117 vehicles in the first three quarters of this year, about 20,000 models behind its sales target. Sales in China account for about 10% of total sales worldwide.
In the wake of the Chinese government’s launch of new regulations to support new energy cars, Tesla may see even faster growth in China over the next quarter. Based on the new regulations released by the State Council in September, electric vehicles will be freed from the license plate lottery system.
Tesla is also in touch with the Chinese government and aims at mass producing its Tesla S model sedan in China within two years. Allegedly, local production will reduce the price of the Tesla S by 1/3 in China.
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers states that 144,284 new energy cars were produced in China from January to September, with 136,733 models having been sold. This puts year-on-year growth at 200% and 230% respectively.
At the press conference Tesla introduced version 7.0 of its car firmware system which features the autonomous driving mode “Autopilot”. The new mode can be used to provide autonomous steering in selected lanes and parallel parking.
Some American Tesla owners have criticized Tesla’s safety standards following the update to 7.0 but Musk has responded saying that Tesla hopes to enhance human driving with machine driving until there’s no observable difference between the two. Musk said at a meeting with local university students on Thursday that he believes autonomous driving will become true within three years.
(Photo from Baidu Image)
