American EV giant Tesla Inc.’s TSLA China sales are picking up momentum despite trailing behind Chinese EV maker BYD Co Ltd. BYDDY.
What Happened: Insurance registrations for Tesla vehicles in China came in at 21,900 units for the week that ended on December 8, marking its second-best week in 2024, according to a report by CnEVPost.
The week prior to that, the company had just 18,700 registrations.
Tesla’s Chinese competitor BYD, meanwhile, had 85,000 registrations, down 13.09% from the week before. BYD, unlike Tesla, makes both battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.
EV startup Li Auto is following Tesla close on heels with weekly registrations touching 12,600 last week. China’s newest EV entrant, Xiaomi, also had 5,400 insurance registrations last week. Insurance registrations in China are considered a proxy for sales.
Analyst Take: Tesla Bull and The Future Fund Managing Partner Gary Black deems the latest insurance registration numbers “outstanding.”
“Tesla China reported an outstanding 21,900 insured registrations for the week of Dec 2-8. This was the 2nd highest week of the year, and 3rd highest week ever. With 3 weeks left in the quarter, 4Q is +17.8% YoY and +9.5% QoQ,” Black noted.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk also applauded the team in China for the achievement. “Great work by Tesla China,” he said in a post on social media platform X.
Why It Matters: Tesla has to deliver at least 514,926 EVs globally in the last quarter if it is to beat its 2023 delivery number of nearly 1.81 million. China is Tesla’s second-largest market after the U.S., making deliveries in the region key to realizing Tesla's annual delivery goal.
However, Tesla has never managed to deliver over 500,000 EVs in a quarter to date, making this an ambitious target.
In the third quarter, Tesla reported deliveries of 462,890 vehicles, up 6.4% year-over-year and up 4.3% quarter-over-quarter.
Deliveries fell 8.5% year-on-year in the first quarter and by 4.8% in the second quarter.
Price Action: Tesla shares closed up 0.15% at $389.79 on Monday. Year-to-date, the stock has gained 56.9%, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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