A new report says that Tesla will halt part of the new Model Y production at Gigafactory Shanghai for 3 weeks to upgrade the lines.
The shutdown will extend beyond the traditional Chinese New Year.
Chinese New Year is technically 2 weeks long, but the official holiday lasts a week, during which important industrial parts of the country are closed.
That includes the auto industry and Tesla, but it looks like the American automaker plans to do things differently this year after it recently began production of its updated Model Y at the Gigafactory Shanghai.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, Tesla plans to shut down part of its new Model Y production lines from approximately January 22nd to February 14th.
In comparison, Tesla plans to shut down the production of the Model 3, the only other car produced at the factory, from January 26 to February 3.
Tesla recently began production of an updated version of its best-selling electric SUV. The report says that the automaker will use the extended shutdown of the Lunar New Year to upgrade parts of the production lines to improve and increase production capacity.
The automaker has launched 480,000 Model Ys in China by 2024 – up about 5% year-on-year.
Reports say that Tesla received more than 50,000 orders for the updated version of the car in the first 24 hours of its launch.
Electrek's Take
It makes sense. For the past few weeks, Tesla has been running a production pilot of an improved version, which is completely different from the previous version, but there are enough differences that new parts and processes can create bottlenecks.
Tesla may have found ways to improve production during that time and will now use it during this extended shutdown.
We will try to track the production and release of the Model Y in China as any delays or production problems could have a big impact, considering the Model Y is the best-selling EV in the world and China is the largest EV market.
Any kind of problem there could have a big impact on Tesla and the broader EV market.
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