Tesla China ends Q1 2023 with nearly 89K sales in March

Tesla had a strong end to the first quarter in China, recording 88,869 sales in March, according to official data released by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) on Tuesday. That brings Tesla China’s quarterly total to nearly 229,322 units, more than half of the automaker’s global total for the first three months of the year.

Tesla started off the year recording 66,051 Model 3 and Model Y sales of vehicles built at Giga Shanghai in January, a month that was shortened due to the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays. That was followed up by another 74,402 sales in February, which was also a shortened month with just 28 days. Production was also impacted however due to a Model 3 production line shutdown for upgrades.

We had been tracking Tesla’s insurance registration data through March, a reliable but unofficial proxy for Tesla sales, and all signs were pointing to a near record month. The official data from the CPCA proves that, as the 88,869 sales in March is the automaker’s second best result ever, only behind the record of 100,291 units that were sold in November 2022.

Those figures also got a boost from the launch of Model S and Model X sales in China, which restarted after a more than two year hiatus late last month.

The CPCA data includes both domestic sales and exports, a breakdown of which should be released later this week. The majority of those sales should be domestic however as Tesla typically prioritizes local deliveries in the final month of the quarter.

Giga Shanghai is cementing its status as a workhorse for Tesla. Over the last two quarters, Q4 2022 and Q1 2023, Giga Shanghai has accounted for over 457,000 of Tesla’s 827,000 global deliveries, or about 55% of all vehicles built at Tesla’s four vehicle Gigafactories.