|
SHANGHAI, Jan. 1-- Tesla's Model 3 delivery in Shanghai has shown that China's opening-up is in full gear. Tesla delivered the first batch of sedans produced by its Shanghai plant on Monday, less than a year after the gigafactory broke ground. The electric carmaker's blistering pace demonstrates that China is determined to enhance its opening-up and reform its business environment. As the largest foreign-invested manufacturing project in Shanghai, construction began on the Shanghai factory on Jan. 7, 2019. The factory is located in Lingang Area, a high-end manufacturing park in the southeastern harbor of Shanghai. It has a designed annual capacity of 500,000 electric cars. Without the support of the central and Shanghai governments, Tesla would be unable to build up a factory, and start mass production and delivery at such fast speed, said Allen Wang, general manager of Tesla China. As the first project after China lifted restrictions on foreign investment in the auto industry, the local government has carried out "a lot of process optimization to greatly reduce the approval time," said Tesla's Global Vice President Tao Lin. Tesla employees received the first batch of the Shanghai-made Model 3 sedans on Monday. Wang said the company will start delivering made-in-China Tesla vehicles to customers on a large scale in January. Tesla's gigafactory in Shanghai can produce 280 vehicles per day and will double its production capacity this year. The sedans' components will be completely domestically produced by the end of 2020, according to Song Gang, the plant's manufacturing director. Currently, 30 percent of the components are produced locally. | 
