Tesla Sold Only 8,817 Cars in China in October, Its Worst Month There Since 2022

Only 8,817 of the cars Tesla delivered from Giga Shanghai in October went to Chinese buyers, Electrek reported, citing China Passenger Car Association data.

That is down 66 percent from a year ago and Tesla's worst month in China since July 2022. Back then, the Shanghai factory was partly shut down for line upgrades. This time it ran normally and shipped 87 percent of what it built out of the country.

The CPCA reported that Tesla China wholesaled 67,829 vehicles in October, up 10.3 percent year over year, the number most headlines ran with. But 59,012 of those were exports. Strip them out and 8,817 cars were left for the domestic market, the one Giga Shanghai was originally built to serve. Nearly all of them were Model Ys (7,807), according to CnEVPost as cited by Electrek, leaving just 1,010 Model 3s. Compared with September, when Tesla sold 64,837 cars in China, domestic sales fell 86 percent.

A familiar quarterly dip, and a much deeper hole

Electrek published an October comparison across three years. Domestic retail was 40,485 in 2024, 26,006 in 2025 and 8,817 in 2026. Exports rose from 27,795 to 35,491 to 59,012, or 87 percent of wholesale this October, up from 41 percent two years ago. Tesla often favors export orders early in each quarter and pushes domestic deliveries toward the end, and September promotions can pull demand forward. Last October was also weak, and Tesla then delivered 73,145 cars in China in November 2025 and 93,843 in December. But October 2026 was less than half of any other first month of a quarter this year: January 18,485, April 25,956 and July 27,249.

China's EV market had a rough month of its own. NEV retail sales fell 10 percent year over year in October to 1.148 million units, according to the CPCA's preliminary data, as Beijing phases out trade-in subsidies and the NEV purchase tax exemption was cut in half on Jan. 1. The overall passenger car market was down 25 percent. Tesla was down 66 percent, about 0.8 percent of China's NEV retail market last month. Meanwhile, Xiaomi delivered more than 50,000 vehicles in October. Leapmotor delivered 106,127, up 51 percent. BYD delivered 490,168, including exports, Electrek reported.

Through October, Tesla has sold 389,905 cars in China, down 15 percent from 458,710 a year earlier and its lowest January-to-October total in at least four years. The company was down 11.9 percent through September, and one bad October pushed that to 15 percent. Exports from Giga Shanghai went the other way, up 101 percent to 420,984, so this year Shanghai has shipped more cars abroad than it sold at home. Beijing is cutting the VAT export rebate on EVs from 13 percent to 9 percent on April 1, 2027. October's 59,012 exports, up 66 percent year over year, fit an expectation that automakers will cram exports in ahead of that deadline. The test, as Electrek framed it, is whether November and December domestic sales bounce back toward last year's 73,000 and 94,000, or whether October was more than timing.