Here Is What We Know About Tesla’s Big China Bonanza

The story about Tesla’s unexpected billion-dollar windfall in China kept Twitter aflutter all weekend. Tesla did not say how it made that money. Tesla does not release sales by region (except when it wants to), and the company would not comment on the persistent rumor that it sold a large block of cars to wholesalers in China. To get you the data Tesla won’t provide, I stuck heads together with the ultimate pros in automotive data, JATO Dynamics, and with the best analyst of the often wild and wooly China business, “Tiger Lady” Junheng Li of Warren Capital. With that, we finally know how many Tesla cars were shipped to China in 2016, and we have an idea how many were registered in China (it’s not  the same number.) We also learn how Tesla managed to (not quite) make its 2016 guidance: It shipped boatloads of (cheap) Tesla cars to China.

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