Tesla Model S Demand in China is Huge

[gym7rjm]

To get back on point. Model S demand in China had BETTER be huge. It's in the best interest of the country. There's a huge pollution problem in China and the fastest way to cut down is Solarpower and Car emissions because manufacturing wouldn't be something the government will cut down on.

Beijing should be incentivizing people to buy a Model S with all the smog that it deals with.

+1, When I was visiting Beijing in 2008 for the Olympics the smog was disgusting. It looked like a morning fog that would never burn off, and worse, you could taste the pollution in the back of your throat after being outside all day. After the first week I was there it rained heavily and pulled all the smog from the skies. I was amazed to see the mountains, previously hidden, surrounding the city!

Preceding the Olympics they closed down all the factories around the city. They also enacted a rule that people could only drive their cars every other day (based on the last digit of their license plate or something). So when the world was watching, they were serious about trying to hide the embarrassing pollution in the city. Considering China increasingly wants to be viewed as a 1st world superpower, they have a strong incentive to curb pollution and be a leader in renewable energy.

 

[DaveT]

China has over one million millionaires with a taste for Western luxury and high technology.
China surpasses one million millionaires | Financial Post

If half of them want the best and safest and highest-tech car in the world (which is also zero emissions and low cost for fuel and maintenance), then they alone could sustain a demand of 100k cars per year (if they buy a new car every 5 years) or more (if they buy more often).

Tesla's Beijing store (opening later this year) will be three times larger than any Tesla store in the US or Europe. I doubt that's a coincidence.
Tesla Motors Going to China, Gamble or Sure Bet? - The Green Optimistic

Glad to hear China's got over a million millionaires and growing.

Did some research on this and pulled this wiki page up, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire:
Number of millionaires by country:
The following is a list of the countries with the most number of millionaires in US$ worldwide according to the London-based wealth consultancy WealthInsight.[SUP][17][/SUP]

Rank[SUP][17][/SUP]	Country	Number of millionaires (2012)
1	United States	5,231,000
2	Japan	2,105,000
3	Germany	1,326,000
4	China	1,280,000
5	United Kingdom	675,000
6	France	555,000
7	Canada	422,000
8	Switzerland	297,000
9	Australia	275,000
10	Italy	259,000
11	India	251,000

 

[Norse]

+1, When I was visiting Beijing in 2008 for the Olympics the smog was disgusting. It looked like a morning fog that would never burn off, and worse, you could taste the pollution in the back of your throat after being outside all day. After the first week I was there it rained heavily and pulled all the smog from the skies. I was amazed to see the mountains, previously hidden, surrounding the city!

Preceding the Olympics they closed down all the factories around the city. They also enacted a rule that people could only drive their cars every other day (based on the last digit of their license plate or something). So when the world was watching, they were serious about trying to hide the embarrassing pollution in the city. Considering China increasingly wants to be viewed as a 1st world superpower, they have a strong incentive to curb pollution and be a leader in renewable energy.

As posted on the alternative energy thread: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/07/world/asia/beijing-pollution-golf-tennis/index.html China needs to act regardless of global climate change, they feel it alot at home. And recent studies shows that smog like this are a much bigger threat to cancer then what people earlier thought. Atm California and Norway are the places where Tesla is hot, but im pretty sure China will be the next.

And for the record DaveT, its 85300 dollar-millionaires in Norway.(2011 numbers)

 

[Causalien]

Can people in China see and contribute to TMC?
If so, could someone get the word out to those who have reserved to post on TMC please?

No
The great firewall of China is both a blessing and a curse. I don't think the websites will be able to withstand the traffic. Also, if the firewall were to come down, the language on the web will have to be switched to Mandarin due to the significant larger amount of people on the web through mobile/PC

I've seen several instances where the firewall went down and it is not orderly.

 

[Cattledog]

[I'd love to hear anybody else's story on any conversations with Tesla store employees and what you've gleaned.]

I posted this a few months back - In April I went to the Gallery in Denver where an employee said, "We sell 1-2 Model S' per day on average, but you should see what they do in California." When I was in Santana Row post Teslive in July, I saddled up to an employee there and tried to coax out a a similar comment. He wouldn't bite, so when I said, "The Denver guy said they sell 1-2 per day and that the California guys sell more." The Santana Row store guy said (with a big grin) "We sell waaayyyy more than 2 per day."

Not China, but not bad!

Sleepy - You can post your article on my blog if you'd like, I need the traffic - lemme know.

teslamodels | Tesla Model S An Ownership Experience

 

[vfx]

What does this ad say?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2011-Tesla-...094?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43b9481e1e

 

[blakegallagher]

that is very interesting VFX... I am very curious as well.

 

[vfx]

Looks pretty old so it may not be a big deal.

 

[stopcrazypp]

What does this ad say?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2011-Tesla-...094?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43b9481e1e

The jpg compression is quite bad (perhaps on purpose) so hard to make up most of the text, but the title translates to "2011 Silicon Valley International Auto Show". The general idea seems to be calling for people to go to the auto show.

You can make out a few English keywords too: Electrification, Tesla, Roadster, Better Place, Coulomb Technologies, Amprius.

 

[brianman]

What does this ad say?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2011-Tesla-...094?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43b9481e1e

I tried cleaning it up a bit but didn't have much luck. In case it's useful:

 

[Causalien]

I tried cleaning it up a bit but didn't have much luck. In case it's useful:

View attachment 33150

It's a brief description of silicon valley and Tesla motor's background based in Silicon Valley. Then the whole story is wrapped together to invite people to the 2011 silicon valley car show.

I went through the Weibo site of Tesla China. Quite amazing to see 400+ conversations on just one tweet. Tesla is already considered cooler than the homebrew BYD over there.

 

[Discoducky]

No
The great firewall of China is both a blessing and a curse. I don't think the websites will be able to withstand the traffic. Also, if the firewall were to come down, the language on the web will have to be switched to Mandarin due to the significant larger amount of people on the web through mobile/PC

I've seen several instances where the firewall went down and it is not orderly.

Sorry, can anyone confirm that the Chinese do not have access to TMC? Seems there is a long list of sites that are blocked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_China

and I don't see an 'allowed' list but there is a censorship policy posted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

and this just makes me laugh: http://www.teslamotors.cn/

 

[NigelM]

Moderator's note:

Let's end the discussion about Kevin's editorial decision. I would move posts, but there's too much content woven into the debate to do so without gutting the thread.

Let's keep the discussion going about Tesla in China, which is a very important topic for the future of TSLA.

Mod Note: Robert was right but folks continued discussing the subject of censoring/moderation of a third-party website and it contributed half this thread so it all got unwound and moved here -> "Censorship"-on-Investnaire-com

Note for the record, that nothing was removed/censored from TMC and the blog function on TMC is available to all provided it covers related subjects of interest.

 

[NStar]

Hi I’ve been reading the forum and just signed up to contribute here too.

This past weekend I did some very limited research on this topic, and found some useful information about a guy’s recent visit to the Tesla Beijing store posted on a “TESLA” forum on a Chinese Car Enthusiasts website autohome (dated Oct 3[SUP]rd[/SUP]): http://club.autohome.com.cn/bbs/thread-c-2357-25306088-1.html

I won’t translate it here but below are all the relevant information in that post:
- The store is not open to the public yet. People need to call and make a reservation to take a tour.
- That guy was very impressed and paid the 250K RMB (41K USD) deposit after the tour.
- Purchase contract is expected to be ready at end of this year; delivery will be Q1 2014
- Expected price is ~1M RMB (164K USD) all tax included. The sales guy stressed that it’s not official, just his personal guesstimate
- There were already 200+ reservations in Beijing.

There is a cell phone number and email address of a Tesla China sales person (Mr. Peng) posted later in that thread. So I called him this morning and learnt the following:
- They’re trying to make the delivery happen ASAP but he confirmed it will be definitely not this year. Early next year is the best guess.
- Price will be slightly above 1M RMB top-configured.
- He would not want to tell me how long the reservation list is. But he told me that if I made the reservation right now, I would get the car the same time as the guy who made the first reservation gets his, i.e. the list so far is still smaller than the first volume shipment planed, I think this is what he meant.

I was less impressed with the 200+ reservation number in Beijing but it was only started late August. Maybe it’s not too bad considering it has been just less than 2 months. Also according to some Chinese news dated at August there were 300+ reservations already from the Hong Kong store. I believe Hong Kong reservation started much earlier this year but there is no delivery yet. So there could be at least ~600 (assuming all reservation convert to sales) deliveries for China Q1 2014. This seems not far away from the ~800 delivery number for Europe Q3 2013.

 

[Chickenlittle]

Mod Note: Robert was right but folks continued discussing the subject of censoring/moderation of a third-party website and it contributed half this thread so it all got unwound and moved here -> "Censorship"-on-Investnaire-com

Note for the record, that nothing was removed/censored from TMC and the blog function on TMC is available to all provided it covers related subjects of interest.

nigel
you remind me of a national hockley league ref. let them get a couple punches in then separate the combatants. like that style. have you thought of a penalty box?

 

[Clprenz]

Can't you just post your article on the beginning of this thread?

 

[brysondad]

Can't you just post your article on the beginning of this thread?

egos and games

 

[artsci]

Having spent much time in China and with a good understanding of the culture of Chinese who can afford a Model S, I'm sure demand in China will be huge. The question is how huge. That will be totally dependent on Tesla's capacity to build and deliver cars, not market demand, which is a given.

 

[lolachampcar]

That will be totally dependent on Tesla's capacity to build and deliver cars, not market demand

just imagine a company that has this problem selling $100K widgets... no, wait, that's Tesla.

 

[kenliles]

just out-
According to China’s official population clock, there are an estimated 1,359,025,970 people in China as of Sept. 26, with just 2% of that number — some 27,180,519 people — consuming one third of the world’s luxury items. The 2% are the backbone of the global luxury goods sales and the target of hundreds of international brand names, the Chinese-language Money Week magazine reports.

2% of China's public consumes one-third of world's luxury goods｜Economy｜News｜WantChinaTimes.com