Musk's late night visit to Giga Shanghai may unveil the new Model 3?
At 0:28 a.m. Beijing time on June 1, Tesla Global Vice President Tao Lin released two photos of Musk and his employees on Weibo, with the text "Thanks for all the support! A rewarding day!" The location was Tesla Giga Shanghai.
Shortly after, Tao Lin also posted a large group photo of Musk and his employees on WeChat with the caption, "An exciting day! Always happy children's day."
According to reports, Tesla has not disclosed Musk's specific itinerary this time, but the industry expects that Musk's trip may be to promote the new Model 3 mass-produced in the Shanghai factory, the Giga Shanghai expansion, and the upcoming Tesla Shanghai Energy Storage Super Factory, and to pave the way for FSD, energy storage products and other landings in China.
Musk met with 3 ministers in 24 hours
After visiting Giga Shanghai in early 2020, Musk visited China again after 3 years, and from the information released so far, the itinerary is shot to the brim.
According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry website at 18:00 on May 30, 2023, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang met with Tesla CEO Musk in Beijing. Qin Gang said that China's new energy automobile industry has a broad development prospect. China will continue to unswervingly promote a high level of opening up to the outside world and is committed to creating a better market-oriented, rule of law and international business environment for enterprises from all countries, including Tesla Inc.
Musk said that U.S. and Chinese interests are intertwined and inseparable as Siamese twins. Tesla is opposed to "decoupling and breaking the chain" and is willing to continue to expand its business in China and share the opportunities of China's development.
Or will unveil the new Model 3?
According to many industry insiders, Musk's visit to Shanghai may be the unveiling of the new Model 3.
The new Model 3 is not a brand new model, but a facelift model, but it is still significant for Tesla, which has not had any new products listed for a long time. Musk has high hopes that the new Model 3 will be able to compete more strongly with its Chinese rivals.
The Model 3 is Tesla's first model for the mass market to start mass production, and it has made a great contribution to Tesla's profitability. But it has been seven years since the Tesla Model 3 was officially launched. Tesla first launched the Model 3 in the U.S. market in 2016, and began mass production deliveries in 2017. The manufacturing cost of the Model 3 has been further reduced with the completion of its Shanghai Superfactory in late 2019 and the start of Model 3 production.
Model 3, which has been introduced for seven years, is still the benchmark product in the car market, but there are still many analysts and industry insiders who believe that the Model 3 is losing its competitiveness in the highly competitive electric car market.
As early as Nov. 28, 2022, Reuters reported that Tesla was developing a new Model 3 to reduce costs and attract customers. On May 16 of this year, Bloomberg reported that Tesla's Shanghai Superfactory was making final preparations for the trial production of the revised Model 3.
Currently, Giga Shanghai is Tesla's highest-capacity production center in the world today. Tesla's latest delivery figures show that it delivered a record 422,900 electric vehicles in the first quarter of 2023, up 4 percent sequentially and 36 percent year-over-year. In the first quarter of this year, Tesla's total sales in China were 229,300 units, up 21 percent year-over-year, according to data from the Passenger Association. Based on this calculation, Giga Shanghai still contributed more than half of the production capacity.
In addition, on April 9, Tesla announced that it will build a new energy storage super factory in Shanghai, which is also Tesla's first energy storage super factory project outside the United States. The outside world believes that Musk, who has not been able to visit China for three years, is bound to personally pave the way for the energy storage factory and future sales of energy storage products.
It is understood that the Tesla energy storage super factory will plan the production of Tesla Megapack, the initial planning annual production of commercial energy storage batteries up to 10,000 units, the scale of energy storage nearly 40GWh, the scope of product offerings cover the global market. Tesla's energy storage super factory project is planned to start in the third quarter of 2023 and put into operation in the second quarter of 2024.
At present, Tesla Megapack batteries have been sold in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries around the world, but have not landed in China.
