Tesla’s China sales fall again: Shanghai exports jump 127%

Tesla China’s H1 2026 numbers show a split that’s hard to miss: local demand softened, while exports from Giga Shanghai surged. Retail sales in China fell 9% year over year to 238,955, which puts them 19% below the H1 2023 peak. Exports, meanwhile, jumped 127% to 228,994 and helped lift Shanghai’s wholesale output 28% to 467,949.

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The shift looks even sharper once you get into the details. Exports accounted for 49% of output, up from 28% a year earlier. In Q2, exports reached 128,394, edging past 126,157 China deliveries for the first time. June exports climbed 257.6% to 36,171, and July wholesale reportedly hit a record 93,000, with most of that volume expected to leave China.

For anyone watching Tesla in China, the domestic picture still looks strained. May retail sales grew 22.5% and July was up 37.8%, but the first five months of the year were still down 7.87%, and Q2 marked the fifth straight quarterly delivery decline. BYD, Xiaomi, Nio, and Leapmotor are gaining ground, while Tesla leans on seven-year low-interest financing and a planned Full Self-Driving (FSD) rollout.

At this point, Shanghai looks more and more like Tesla’s export hub for Europe, Canada, and other Asian markets. Elon Musk has dismissed sale rumors as “fake news,” and with about 1 million units of annual capacity, the factory remains one of Tesla’s core assets.