As revealed by Tesla in a Form 10Q filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, the company’s business in China experienced a quarterly decline in revenue due to the Covid lockdowns that hit the country in the second quarter.
Tesla China’s revenue hit $3.787 billion in Q2, a 32.45% increase from $2.859 billion a year ago. This number, however, also represented a decline of 18.56% from Q1 2022’s revenue of $4.65 billion. This represented the first sequential decline in Tesla China’s revenue since Giga Shanghai began vehicle production in 2019, according to a CNEV Post report.
Global revenue for the electric vehicle maker in Q2 2022 was $16.9 billion. From this number, the company’s United States division accounted for $9.6 billion of revenue or about 56.8%. Tesla China, on the other hand, accounted for 22.4% of Tesla’s Q2 revenue, down from 24.8% in Q1 2022.
While it is unfortunate to see a quarterly decline in Tesla China’s numbers, the results come as no surprise considering the Covid lockdowns that were implemented in the country in the second quarter. Shanghai’s Covid lockdowns, for example, forced Tesla’s Giga Shanghai facility to halt production for over three weeks.
Gigafactory Shanghai is situated in the Lingang, Pudong area in Shanghai. The Lingang area went into lockdown on March 28, and its residents’ travel restrictions were not lifted until June 1, 2022. As such, Giga Shanghai was also only able to return to 100% capacity utilization in early June 2022 as well.
The challenges faced by Tesla China were represented by the vehicles that the company sold over the second quarter. In April, the month which covered the bulk of the Covid lockdowns, Tesla China only sold 1,512 vehicles and produced 10,757. Deliveries steadily recovered as Giga Shanghai was ramped, with Tesla selling 32,165 vehicles in May and hitting a record of 78,906 units sold in June, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).