STORY: Tesla Shanghai factory achieves milestone with 2 mln cars produced
DATELINE: Sept. 6, 2023
LENGTH: 00:02:20
LOCATION: SHANGHAI, China
CATEGORY: ECONOMY

SHOTLIST:
1. various of the Tesla's Shanghai plant
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (Chinese): SONG GANG, Senior director of manufacturing at Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai
3. various of the production of cars
4. SOUNDBITE 2 (Chinese): LU YU, Official with the Lin-gang special area administration

STORYLINE:

Tesla says its Shanghai factory achieved the milestone of 2 million cars produced on Wednesday. 

Tesla's Shanghai plant, the carmaker's first gigafactory outside the United States, turned out the first vehicle in December 2019.

The factory produced its first 1 million cars in over 30 months, and its second 1 million in less than 13 months.

Song Gang, the plant's senior director of manufacturing, says Tesla has grown rapidly thanks to the complete new energy vehicle (NEV) industry cluster in the Yangtze River Delta region, Shanghai's magnetism for global high-end talents, the advantageous geographical location for transport, and the high-quality business environment.

SOUNDBITE 1 (Chinese): SONG GANG, Senior director of manufacturing at Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai
"In fact, while landing the factory, we also pay great attention to the growth of the supply chain. The Yangtze River Delta region has an excellent supply chain foundation and resources, which also lays a very good foundation for the success of Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai."

In the first eight months of this year, Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai delivered more than 600,000 vehicles, exceeding the total number achieved in 2021.

In the first half of this year, Tesla delivered 889,000 electric vehicles globally. More than half of them came from the Shanghai plant. It has become a global export hub for Tesla, whose cars now sell well in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America.

Tesla is driving the intelligent NEV industry to become the first industrial cluster worth over 100 billion yuan (about 13.89 billion U.S. dollars) in the Lin-gang special area of the Shanghai pilot free trade zone.

SOUNDBITE 2 (Chinese): LU YU, Official with the Lin-gang special area administration
"The Lin-gang special area administration has set up a special project service class to ensure the rapid promotion of the project to shorten and optimize the approval process to the maximum extent. In this process, Tesla also rapidly promoted the localization of the supply chain."

Currently, Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai has an industrial chain localization rate of more than 95 percent, with 99.99 percent of the employees being Chinese.

Tesla's performance is an epitome of numerous foreign companies thriving in China. According to an official report, more than 80 percent of the foreign enterprises surveyed expect the profit rate of investment in China this year to either be flat or increase.

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Shanghai, China.
(XHTV)