With Tesla’s Shanghai factory (Gigafactory 3) up and running, the electric carmaker is now looking to open a design and research centre in China. According to a recruitment notice on the company’s official WeChat account, the facility will be responsible for developing “Chinese-style” vehicles, as reported by Reuters.
The notice stated that the company is looking for designers and other staff to help fulfill the goal, and called for applications by February 1. “In order to achieve a shift of ‘Made in China’ to ‘Designed in China’, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has proposed a very cool thing – set up a design and research center in China,” it read.
However, the notice didn’t reveal where the centre would be located, nor did it state when operations would begin. Interestingly enough, the recruitment post did include a sketch of a short wheelbase vehicle concept that could indicate an electric city car is being planned, with the name “Model 2” being thrown around as a possible name for such a car.
The concept bears some resemblance to the Model 3 and Model Y, but features more aggressively-styled bodywork, particularly in the rear. For now, we can only take the sketch at face value, as the company has yet to indicate if this would become a production car.
The carmaker is betting big on Chinese consumers, with strong demand for its vehicles in the past two years. The number of registered Tesla in the country rose to 6,643 units in December last year, bringing the total number in the Chinese market to 42,715 units in 2019, which is considerably more than the 16,360 units recorded in 2018. This commitment to the Chinese market will also see personalised features being offered to the customers there.
Tesla has previously announced it would be bringing games and streaming videos to its in-car touchscreens in China in the first quarter of 2020. These include stream channels from cartoon-focused Bilibili and Alibaba-backed Youku, along with three online games – mahjong and two versions of poker from Chinese tech-giant Tencent.
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Tahniah Tesla & China! This clearly showed that Americans no longer are innovators and developers. This must be due to tongkat and bantuan to these lazy people. Better they come to Asia like China and Malaysia. Even German bosses admitted our Pekan abang-abangs are more efficient than their local people. It is time Tesla relocated to Asia.
The world of automotive is advancing by investing in R&D for EV development. Every carmakers now have at least 1 EV, Hybrid or either PHEV. As the world is going towards Game-Changing EV, petrol and diesel cars are slowly being left behind. While the world is going towards EV, Proton are also developing their own EV but are using goverment’s money. Unfortunately, 5 years after Proton showcased their Game-Changing Iriz EV, Proton never sold it to the public. It’s 2020 already, confirmed already Iriz EV Game Over, 1 Billion Ringgit also going down to the drain
You keep talking about gamechanger but from 2003 until today, 17 years later, we are still waiting for your gamechanger Kenari Hybrid. Until today your gamechanger car is still missing, it looks to be your talk is all gameover now.
And then after china succesfully copy2 ciplak2 tesla tech n build their own chinesela, tesla close shop go back us n no good sales in china.
Tesla, come open & invest in Malaysia. We’ve all the good things for business setup & environment. Furthermore, we have minister that goes out on a limb to his support flying car. Your research centre will be same, or get better attention. Best of all, we have “Shared Prosperity Vision 2030”!!
In addition,Malaysia has lots of public holidays, very stress free work environment, zero competition, extended post natal leaves, high encouragement to staffs to attend/training courses esp, during workhour, etc. Plus, the staffs always syukur every day.
Seriously, please consider Malaysia. TQ
As Rakyat Malaysia pointed out, we would have gladly would come to your beautiful country at some point. However right now, the situation with your CKD price increase and government bias towards Perotiga does not favour Tesla being in Malaysia. Get rid of your useless Government, then we can talk about Tesla presence. Cheers.
“These include stream channels from cartoon-focused Bilibili and Alibaba-backed Youku”
Why Proton cannot bring Bilibili and Youku? Hopeless company, taxpayers money wasted.
No duhh!!! Because not everyone understands Chinese you dolt.