Tesla Inc. won’t have a presence at the Shanghai auto show, despite a slew of other international carmakers planning on attending and unveiling new models.
China’s major automobile show kicks off on April 18 for media and opens to the general public on April 20.
While the event was canceled last year due to China’s COVID restrictions, Tesla received unwanted publicity at the show in 2021, when a Model 3 owner climbed atop a display vehicle and yelled that her father, who was driving at the time, almost died because her Tesla’s brakes failed.
The protest was captured on video and went viral in China. Tesla eventually made a public apology after facing criticism from local authorities and state-run media, without acknowledging any defect.
A Shanghai-based Tesla representative confirmed the company would not attend this year’s show but said there’s no particular reason for that.
The electric-vehicle maker has been cutting prices in China and around the world, after tweaks throughout the first quarter yielded only an incremental sales gain.
In China, Tesla triggered a price war that could reshape the world’s biggest car market, with hefty discounts threatening to drive some automakers out of business.
The show comes at a time when China’s EV market is becoming increasingly cutthroat.
Models from new companies such as Nio Inc., Xpeng Inc. and Li Auto Inc. have flooded the market, adding to existing offerings from more established players like Tesla and China’s BYD Co., which is now the world’s second-largest maker of electric cars.
Tesla had a presence at the Guangzhou auto show in December last year. The Austin, Texas, carmaker has an EV factory on the outskirts of Shanghai that produced almost 711,000 EVs last year, or 52 percent of its worldwide output.
Earlier this month it said it will build a new battery factory in Shanghai to manufacture Megapack large-scale energy-storage units. Construction is scheduled to begin in the third quarter of this year and the plant will commence production in the second quarter of 2024.