Tesla EV shipments slip from China factory as drivers choose cheaper local options

The factory handed 67,886 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles to customers in mainland China and abroad in July, down 8.4 per cent from a year earlier, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). Deliveries fell 5.2 per cent from June.

“Premium models are increasingly losing their lustre among Chinese consumers because they want to save money,” said Tian Maowei, a sales manager at Yiyou Auto Service in Shanghai. “Consumers all flocked to cheaper, Chinese-developed electric cars.”

The sales decline came just one month after the Shanghai plant ended an eight-month decline with an increase in deliveries.

The Gigafactory, Tesla’s largest production base worldwide, reported a total of 432,360 deliveries between January and July this year, down 13.7 per cent from a year earlier. The figure includes sales on the mainland and exports.

On the mainland, EV sales jumped 35 per cent to 7.6 million units in the first seven months of 2025, according to the CPCA.