CNA – Tesla is listing China-made Model 3 and Model Y models for sale in Canada, the company’s website showed yesterday confirming the electric car maker has completed its first shipments to North America from its Shanghai factory.
Tesla’s website showed both rear-wheel drive Model Y vehicles and the long-range, all-wheel drive version of the Model 3 available for immediate delivery in British Columbia, with codes showing they were manufactured at Tesla’s Gigafactory Shanghai.
Both models qualify for federal incentives of CAD5,000 (USD3,700) in Canada, which, unlike the United States (US), does not link electric-vehicle (EV) subsidies to the location of the plant that made the car.
Tesla representatives in China and at the company’s headquarters in the US did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The company and other electric car manufacturers have a cost advantage in China as exports from that market boom. The China-made version of the Model Y was listed for CAD61,990 in Canada. That is about 22 per cent more than the equivalent vehicle costs in China before incentives.
Tesla’s move to export to Canada from Shanghai could help it keep vehicles made at its plants in California and Texas for sale in the US, where they qualify for potential tax incentives of up to USD7,500 under the Biden administration’s subsidy programme.
It also opens a new market for Tesla Shanghai, which last year accounted for more than half of the company’s production.
Tesla’s Shanghai factory manufactures EVs for sale in China and exports to overseas markets, including Europe. But Tesla faces growing competition on price and features from EV makers in China, and its Berlin factory has been ramping up output of the Model Y for customers in Europe. Tesla uses a code when listing vehicles for sale that corresponds to the first three digits of the vehicle identification number, or VIN. The VINs for Tesla models built by the Shanghai factory all start with the letters “LRW”.
It was not clear how many China-made, Tesla vehicles were available for purchase in Canada or how many had been sold. Tesla said last month that it would offer a new, cheaper version of its Model Y in Canada, a rear-wheel drive variant of the SUV-styled crossover that would qualify for Canadian government incentives.
The cars qualifying for that subsidy on Tesla’s website carry a VIN code showing they were built by the company’s Shanghai factory.
