Design News - Captain Hybrid - China's Electric Cars No Better Than Ours Same old song. That's bordering on FUD, IMHO.
I was at a Nike conference yesterday and Tesla sent Troy Jones to be our guest speaker. He introduced himself as the regional manager and said he works with George Blankenship. In his speech to us, he told us that Asia Pacific was Tesla's largest market and that Tesla is looking into moving some of their manufacturing to China. Does anyone have more details on this? I'm wondering which city they are considering and who they may be partnering with.
If Tesla actually gets to the point where they sell in volume to Asia, then it makes sense to have some local manufacturing.
The China domestic market, even for premium cars like BMW, Mercedes, etc, is enormous. I've heard rumors that Tesla will open a retail presence there (probably Shanghai), but not so sure about manufacturing.
A lot of global companies will localize manufacturing - you skip all the customs issues, shipping costs, etc. While selecting China would prob be for cost savings, the volume isn't there yet - and in any case, I'd be surprised if they moved any part of manufacturing to China - more likely somewhere else in Asia. Just a guess on my part. You just don't move new designs offshore, where you can't make quick changes and evaluate first hand. Stable product, not requiring a lot of interaction with the engineers ... sure. We're not there yet.