"There's this place called Shanghai..."
Tesla shares are getting a small bump after it the company announced it sold 56,006 China-made vehicles in September. The sales included 3,853 vehicles that were exported.
The number is the highest since Tesla started producing vehicles in Shanghai and marks a record for the company.
The boost in China-made vehicles comes despite passenger car sales in China in September being down 17% from a year prior. Data from the China Passenger Car Association confirmed the numbers on Tuesday morning. The number dwarfs the 44,246 China-made vehicles the company produced in August.
Of those, 31,379 were exported, showing that Tesla's foothold domestically in China could once again be strengthening heading into the fall.
Recall, Tesla's August numbers were called into question by analyst Gordon Johnson (as usual), who pointed out that Tesla's local sales numbers reported for August didn't seem to match that of official insurance data from the country.
"In short, there’s a word for providing data to government agencies that does not match up with officially reported government insurance data," Johnson said in a note we published in September.
In July, Tesla's numbers in China had collapsed amidst growing tensions between the company and the CCP. Since then, sales have stabilized at least for the time being.
Tesla's main competitors in China, Nio and Xpeng, delivered over 10,000 vehicles each in September. Volkswagen also sold more than 10,000 ID series EVs in September.
