Tesla sold 67,829 China-made cars at wholesale in October, up 10.3% from a year earlier but down 28.9% from September’s 95,366, according to preliminary data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) released Tuesday. It was Tesla China’s lowest month since February. The year-to-date total is 810,889, up 21.4%.
The CPCA wholesale number covers every Model 3 and Model Y that leaves Giga Shanghai, whether it’s sold in China or shipped abroad. Exports go to Europe, Asia Pacific and Canada, Reuters noted, and Japan is in that Asia Pacific group. This first estimate doesn’t split October into domestic sales and exports. That breakdown usually comes later in the month.
The numbers
| Tesla China wholesale (CPCA) | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| July | 74,117 | 67,886 | 93,579 |
| August | 86,697 | 83,192 | 86,166 |
| September | 88,321 | 90,812 | 95,366 |
| October | 68,280 | 61,497 | 67,829 |
| Jan.–Oct. total | – | 667,861 | 810,889 |
The year-on-year line is the better one. October was Tesla China’s 12th straight month of annual growth, Reuters said, and the gain sped up from 5% in September. Every month of 2026 so far has beaten the same month of 2025, according to CnEVPost, which tracks the series.
The month-on-month line looks worse than it is. A 29% drop from September sounds like a collapse, but Tesla runs on a quarterly rhythm. It pushes deliveries hard in the last month of each quarter and ships cars to far-off markets early in the next one, so the first month of a quarter is almost always the weakest. October 2025 was 32% below September 2025. October 2024 was 23% below September 2024. This year’s drop sits right between them. Hong Kong’s AASTOCKS reported Tesla shares were down 0.3% in US premarket trading after the figure came out, so traders weren’t shocked either.
Exports have been doing the heavy lifting
What matters inside that total is the mix. In the first nine months of 2026, Tesla delivered 381,088 cars in China, down 11.9% from a year earlier, while exports from Shanghai more than doubled to 361,972, up 108.4%, according to CPCA data compiled by CnEVPost. Exports made up 48.7% of Shanghai’s wholesale volume in that period, up from 28.6% a year earlier. In September alone, Shanghai exported 30,529 cars and sold 64,837 at home.
So the October split will tell us more than the headline. If exports held up, the softness was mostly in China, where Tesla has been working hard to pull buyers in. Late last month it halved the down payment on the Model 3 and Model Y to 39,900 yuan (about $5,990) and added 0% financing. That offer was announced at the end of October, so November is the first real test of whether it works.
China’s market grew. Tesla’s didn’t, this month
The wider market went the other way. The CPCA estimates China’s passenger NEV wholesale reached 1.8 million in October, up 12% year-on-year and 8% from September, Yicai and Sina Finance reported, with BYD, Geely, Chery, Changan and Leapmotor the top five. Tesla’s 10.3% annual growth trailed the market slightly, and its monthly drop was the opposite of the market’s monthly gain. The CPCA itself warns that its early figures can differ from final company data, so treat the 1.8 million as an estimate.
Retail is the soft spot. In the first 25 days of October, China’s NEV retail sales were 753,000, down 13% from a year earlier, the CPCA said last week (via Cailian Press on Sina). Wholesale is up and retail is down, which means automakers are shipping more cars to dealers and overseas than Chinese buyers are taking home.
On our October China EV scoreboard, 67,829 puts Tesla China third, behind BYD (490,168) and Leapmotor (106,127) and ahead of Xpeng (50,237) and Xiaomi (more than 50,000). We’ve added the Tesla row now that the CPCA figure is out.
The EVX Take
October looks like a normal start-of-quarter month for Tesla China, and there’s a Japan angle in it. The Model 3 and Model Y sold in Japan are built in Shanghai, and Shanghai now sends out almost half its output. So a soft month in China says little about supply for buyers in Japan, where Tesla Japan is now pushing the updated Model 3 and Model Y, which support V2L power output. The real question is November. Q4 is when Tesla usually pushes hardest, and China’s new 0% financing will meet a market where retail is shrinking. If the domestic number doesn’t recover, Shanghai will lean even harder on exports, and right-hand-drive Asia Pacific markets like Japan are part of that outlet.
Sources: CnEVPost (CPCA data), Reuters (via U.S. News), Newsquawk, AASTOCKS (via Yahoo Finance HK), Yicai (CPCA NEV estimate), Sina Finance (CPCA NEV estimate), Cailian Press via Sina (CPCA Oct. 1–25 retail), Tesla Japan on X (V2L). Not a Tesla App had not covered the October figure at the time of writing.
— The EVX News team
Featured image: Aerial view of Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai, where every Model 3 and Model Y counted in the CPCA figure is built (2023). Image: China News Service / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).
