Gigafactory Shanghai sits in the Lingang New Area on the city’s southeastern coast and was Tesla’s first assembly plant outside the United States. Construction began in January 2019, production started before the end of that year, and the first customer cars were delivered in January 2020, an unusually short interval for a plant of its size. It was also the first wholly foreign-owned car factory in China, built after Beijing dropped the joint-venture requirement for electric-vehicle manufacturers in 2018.
The site builds two models, the Model 3 and the Model Y, with capacity for roughly a million cars a year. Over its first six years it has accounted for close to half of all Tesla deliveries worldwide, and its milestones now arrive on that scale: the four millionth China-built Tesla in December 2025, the six millionth battery pack in August 2026, the last million packs taking about nine months.
Its role has shifted from supplying China to supplying everyone else. In July 2026 the plant exported 66,330 vehicles, its highest monthly figure and close to 71% of what it shipped that month, while deliveries inside China fell year on year. Exports over the first seven months of 2026 came to 295,324 cars, more than double the same period a year earlier. Canada is part of that shift: after a trade agreement cut the Canadian duty on Chinese electric cars, the rear-drive Model 3 sold there became a Shanghai car.
