But last month CEO Elon Musk said “radical interest rate changes” have affected the affordability of all vehicles, new and used, and that Tesla could cut prices to sustain volume growth.
The latest cut in China, along with another in October and recent incentives for Chinese buyers, mean a 13 percent to 24 percent reduction in Tesla’s prices from September in its second-largest market after the United States, Reuters calculations showed.
Tesla slashed prices for all Model 3 and Model Y EVs in China by between 6 percent to 13.5 percent, according to Reuters calculations based on the website prices. The starting price for the Model 3 was cut to 229,900 yuan ($33,427), from 265,900 yuan.
Grace Tao, Tesla’s vice president in charge of external communications in China, said on Weibo that the price cuts in China reflected engineering innovation and answered Beijing’s call to encourage economic development and consumption.
Deliveries of Tesla’s China-made EVs hit their lowest in five months in December. Tesla’s Shanghai plant, which was expanded last year, also exports vehicles to Europe.
So far, there has been no sign of Tesla cutting prices in Europe, where according to data from research group JATO Dynamics sales jumped 93 percent in November year-on-year and the Model Y was the top-selling car for the second time in 2022.
Tesla also saw its share of Europe’s battery electric vehicle market jump to 18.9 percent in November, from 12.3 percent in the same month a year earlier.
