Tesla will build a factory in Shanghai to help bring costs down
Tesla is about to build a factory in Shanghai, China, after months of appealing to the government for approval.
This move was reported by the Wall Street Journal, citing people briefed on the company's plan. The China plant is expected to help the Silicon Valley electric vehicle manufacturer push down costs.
Tesla has been pushing for a China facility for months, noting that it'll be key in helping it sell more vehicles to the fast-growing appetite for EVs there.
All Tesla cars are still produced in the U.S., but CEO Elon Musk has pointed out that offshore plants are necessary to help it achieve its goal of producing 500,000 cars a year by 2018.
Last week, it also announced that Model S and Model X cars sold in China will come with dual charging ports -- one for a European plug, and the other to incorporate the GB port that China has adopted.
Tesla hasn't officially announced the China factory, but on Monday posted a bit of a teaser on its Chinese Weibo account.
In a series of pictures, it showed off the world's largest Tesla super charging facility in Shanghai, able to charge 50 Tesla cars at the same time.
China is going full-electric — no more gasoline
And China, for its part, has pretty much gone all in for EVs.
In September, it announced that the world's biggest car market would fully ban gasoline cars in future, going full-electric eventually.
The company has also been aggressively laying out charging ports, starting with the two major cities of Beijing and Shanghai. By the end of this year, it'll build another 800,000 EV charging points in the country.
Beijing and Shanghai already have a charging point within a radius of 5km of another, and other cities like Guangzhou are racing to close the gap.
China holds huge potential for any auto maker. The country sold 28 million cars last year. That's a third of the 88 million cars and vans sold around the world.
Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
