Tesla’s China Production Reaches a Milestone

 Tesla (ticker: TSLA) shares were down 0.5% to $895.45 in premarket trading Monday.
S&P 500
and
Dow Jones Industrial Average
futures both fell about 0.5%.

The number isn’t a big surprise. Musk mentioned the 3-million figure at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in early August. The number is also backward-looking. Those are a couple of reasons the stock isn’t getting a boost from the announcement.

Still, that’s a lot of cars. Tesla started out shipping less than 2,000 units back in 2010. That’s about 12 years of sales. Looking ahead, Tesla should deliver its next 3 million vehicles in the next two years, according to Wall Street estimates.

What’s more, Tesla reached 3 million out of essentially two factories. One in Fremont, Calif., and the other in Shanghai. Tesla started shipping vehicles out of Shanghai around the start of 2020. It took that plant less than two years to hit 1 million units shipped. The Fremont plant took almost 10 years to ship the same amount. Of course, Tesla added new, lower-priced models, starting with the Model 3 back in 2017.

Tesla also is ramping up two new plants in Texas and Germany. Musk said the company should be producing cars at a rate of about 2 million a year by the end of 2022.

News of the China milestone came as fresh data showed a weakening of China’s economic recovery in July due to Beijing’s strict lockdown policy to combat Covid-19 outbreaks. Its central bank also unexpectedly lowered a key interest rate in an attempt to kick-start growth.

EV sales might need the boost. Chinese EV maker
Li Auto
(LI) reported second-quarter numbers on Monday. The numbers were fine, but guidance was problematic. The company expects to ship about 28,000 vehicles in the third quarter. Analysts were projecting about 39,000. Li stock fell more than 6% in premarket trading.

The latest unofficial update from Musk follows second-quarter data that showed Tesla recovered from its pandemic lows, delivering 254,695 electric vehicles in the period, with standout data for June — its best production month ever.

Write to Rupert Steiner at rupert.steiner@dowjones.com