Tesla China announced on Tuesday that Tesla vehicles will continue to get free EV license plates in Shanghai according to the local government policy.
For non-EV and several foreign EV brands, a licence plate normally costs RMB 80,000 (USD 12,000) in Shanghai, with a long application procedure to get one.
Over the past two years, Shanghai’s government has issued a series of guidelines to accelerate the development of new energy vehicles and the construction of charging infrastructure. This year it plans to build 4,000 charging points to satisfy the needs of EV customers.
Tesla is taking advantage of this golden opportunity to build more charging stations in China. Recently, it launched a plan with China Quality Certification Center (CQC) to ensure the compatibility and safety of charging infrastructure for its models.
CQC has been involved in certification projects for charging cables, power batteries and electric machines for regulation of the EV charging infrastructure industry.
The cooperation between Tesla and CQC will help China actively boost its EV sector.
Over just the last two years, Tesla built 372 supercharging spots and 1,200 destination charging spots all over the country.
But charging infrastructure is still not sufficient to meet customer-needs. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufactures, in the first three months of 2016, EV output in China reached 63,000 units with sales of 58,000 units.
In addition to Tesla ambitiously exploring the charging facilities business in China, last month, Panasonic China disclosed that their electric vehicle battery factory in the Northern Chinese city of Dalian will go into production in 2017. As the biggest global electric vehicle battery supplier, Panasonic will also provide batteries for Tesla.
(Top photo from teslamotors.com.)