Tesla's share of EV sales hits 3-year low on Shanghai lockdown

Tesla's share of global electric vehicle (EV) sales fell to the lowest in more than 3 years due to Shanghai's lockdown, which cost the carmaker weeks of output from its most productive plant.

The Model 3 maker registered 39,650 vehicles in April, down 78 per cent from the month of March, according to a report Dan Levy, Credit Suisse's US auto analyst, published Wednesday (Jun 8). Tesla's share of global EV sales dropped to 10 per cent from 27 per cent, Levy wrote, citing data from EV-Volumes, which tracks more than 80 markets.

Tesla did not reply to a request for comment.

Tesla is going to great lengths to restore production at its Shanghai factory, which was shut for about 3 weeks beginning in late March when the city implemented restrictions to contain a Covid-19 outbreak. Thousands of workers have been working 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week, to bring the facility back up to speed. Many slept on the plant floor as part of a so-called closed-loop system to keep Covid out and cars rolling off production lines.

It's not unusual for Tesla's sales to drop substantially from the last month of one quarter to the first month of the next. Chief executive officer Elon Musk has said the company concentrates on making cars for export early each quarter, and that the time it takes to transport those vehicles to customers back-ends deliveries every 3 months.

Musk tweeted in September that Tesla was hoping to reduce this end-of-quarter wave by early this year, and wrote that starting production at a new factory near Berlin would help the company smooth out its deliveries. The Shanghai plant became the carmaker's primary export hub last year. BLOOMBERG