Grace Tao, Tesla’s global Vice President, said today on Chinese social media platform Weibo that recent reports of the company acquiring bankrupt Chinese carmaker Zotye Auto are false (via CnEVPost).
Rumours surfaced after a document, dated February 18, detailing Zotye’s promise to market regulators in the Zhejiang province to obtain necessary approvals after acquiring a business license started making the rounds on the World Wide Web.
The document was signed by Zhu Xiaotong, Tesla President for the Greater China region and another global VP, and bore the seal of Tesla Shanghai.
According to Tao, the document is not authentic and the signature and seal were both forged — a suspected crime that Tesla plans to report to the relevant public security authorities.
Zotye was once one of the most successful names in China’s low-cost car market, with sales reaching 30,000 units in 2008. Unfortunately, the brand eventually failed due to frequent quality control issues and a lack of innovation.
Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai has bolstered the electric carmaker’s global production capacity, and the company has enjoyed massive success in China — Tesla sold a record 70,847 Shanghai-made EVs in December 2021, and more than doubled year-over-year sales with 59,845 cars in January 2022 and 56,515 in February 2022.
Despite Giga Shanghai’s impressive production capacity, Tesla is struggling to keep up with the growing demand for its cars in the region, especially since the company also exports Shanghai-made vehicles from China to other markets.
Even though Tesla China denied reports of a possible second Chinese production location in Shenyang, a Reuters report last month confirmed that Tesla is planning a second factory in China to more than double its production capacity in the region.
The company’s acquisition of Zotye seemed plausible, since buying a bankrupt automaker that already owns assembly lines in China makes sense as a fast route to increasing production capacity in the interim as the electric vehicle (EV) pioneer explores a second production facility in the region.
“This year, Tesla will start the site selection process for the new factory, which will be determined in 2023,” a source familiar with the matter told Chinese media outlet Cailian.
