China and the United States are in the midst of a new round of trade war, and Tesla Model S and Model X electric cars have been shipped to China from the United States until now, since they are manufactured only there. Given the current price level in the Chinese electric car market and rising customs duties, importing older Tesla models to China is no longer economically viable, so the company has stopped accepting orders from local customers.
Image Source: Tesla
This is reported by CnEVPost, explaining that just yesterday Tesla Model S and Model X were available for order in China, but the waiting period varied from three to eight months. Now, on the Chinese Tesla website, both models are only available for study, but it is no longer possible to order them through official channels. It should be recognized that even on a global scale, the oldest Tesla models are not particularly popular, since they account for no more than 4% of the company’s entire production program.
The more affordable Model 3 and Model Y are produced at Tesla’s plant in China, so they are offered at relatively attractive prices on the local market. Until recently, Tesla’s Shanghai plant produced half of the world’s total volume of these models, with a significant portion of Chinese-assembled cars being exported. In February, as noted by CnEVPost, Tesla representatives said that the company had no plans to exclude Model S and Model X from its range of offerings. Moreover, they may be updated again by the end of the year, since the previous restyling in 2022 was already quite a long time ago by market standards. Tellingly, the company stopped accepting orders for customized Model S and Model X in Japan on March 31 of this year.
TechCrunch reports that a significant number of Tesla electric cars have flooded the American secondary market in March. In the last week of the month, for example, more than 13,000 cars of this brand were listed for sale on specialized sites. This is not only an absolute weekly record, but also 67% more than were put up for sale the week before.
In the US, Tesla is not doing well on the primary market either. Almost 300,000 electric vehicles of all brands were sold in the country in the first quarter, which is 10.6% more than a year earlier. At the same time, Tesla’s sales fell by 9%, although competing American brands showed decent growth. In particular, GM sold more than 30,000 electric vehicles of all its brands, which is almost twice as much as last year. The decline in demand for Tesla electric vehicles is usually associated not only with growing competition and an aging model range, but also with the political activity of the company’s head Elon Musk, because of which many ordinary people project their hostility towards the billionaire onto the automaker’s products. Some Americans are forced to get rid of Tesla electric vehicles, since Musk’s opponents do not hesitate to show aggression towards them, relying only on the brand of the car.