By Michael Elkins
In an exclusive story, Reuters reports that Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is re-evaluating the way the company sells electric cars in China. China is Tesla’s second-largest market. However, the electric vehicle giant is considering closing some showrooms in malls in cities like Beijing where traffic plunged during COVID restrictions.
According to people familiar with the plan, Tesla is looking to shift its strategy to put more emphasis on stores in less-costly suburban locations. These locations would also provide repairs. A goal set by CEO Elon Musk following a Tweet last week where he said that he had made "advancing Tesla service to make it awesome" a top priority.
"It's not necessary to open showrooms in expensive shopping malls, especially when the repair business has become lucrative," said Yale Zhang, managing director at Shanghai-based consultancy Automotive Foresight.
"It makes better sense to keep only one or two showrooms downtown to keep the brand positioning but move more to suburbs.”
As part of that push, Tesla is looking to ramp up hiring of technicians and other staff for service jobs in China. Tesla's China recruitment website showed more than 300 openings for service jobs as of Thursday.
The U.S. automaker sold 400,000 China-made Model 3 and Model Y cars in the first eight months of the year, with 60% of them sold locally, according to the China Passenger Car Association. That was 67% more than a year ago.
Shares of TSLA are up 0.09% in pre-market trading, Thursday.