Tesla’s actual retail sales in China fell 10% year-over-year in April to just 25,956 vehicles, according to new data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) — despite widespread reports last week that Tesla’s China sales had surged 36%.
The discrepancy is the same one we’ve been flagging for months: the 36% figure is based on wholesale numbers from Giga Shanghai, which include exports. The retail figure, which reflects what Chinese consumers actually bought, tells a very different story.
The 36% headline was misleading
Last week, when CPCA released preliminary wholesale data showing Tesla’s Giga Shanghai output hit 79,478 vehicles in April, outlets from Reuters to Benzinga ran with variations of “Tesla China sales jump 36%.” The stock moved higher on the news.
The problem is that 79,478 includes every vehicle that left the Shanghai factory — including 53,522 vehicles shipped to overseas markets. That export figure was up 80% year-over-year and represented the second-highest monthly export total in Giga Shanghai’s history.
Strip out exports, and Tesla sold just 25,956 vehicles to Chinese consumers in April. That’s down 9.66% from the 28,731 units sold in April 2025, and it marks the second consecutive month of year-over-year retail decline following March’s 24% crash.
Compared to March’s 56,107 retail units, April plunged 53.7% — though some of that sequential drop is seasonal, as March typically benefits from end-of-quarter push dynamics.
Market share hits new lows
Tesla’s weak domestic performance dragged its market share to concerning levels. The company captured just 3.06% of China’s overall NEV retail market in April — its lowest share since November 2025. In the pure BEV segment, Tesla held 4.48%, also a new low since November 2025.
For the January-April period, Tesla’s cumulative retail sales in China totaled 138,754 vehicles, down 15% from the same period last year. The decline that began accelerating in mid-2025 shows no signs of reversing.
This follows the pattern we’ve tracked extensively: Tesla’s full-year 2025 retail sales in China fell roughly 5%, its first annual decline since Giga Shanghai began operations. Then Q1 2026 retail sales crashed 16%. January alone saw a 45% collapse to the lowest monthly figure in over three years.
Exports mask the domestic decline — again
The wholesale-vs-retail gap in April was stark. Of the 79,478 vehicles that left Giga Shanghai, 67% were exported. Tesla shipped 53,522 vehicles overseas, up 80% year-over-year and up 81% from March.
In the first four months of 2026, Tesla exported 154,122 vehicles from Shanghai — a 127% surge from the same period last year. Meanwhile, domestic retail sales dropped 15% over the same timeframe.
Tesla adjusted its financing policies in China in May, canceling a seven-year low-interest loan option and retaining only a zero-interest plan for up to five years. Whether that stimulates demand remains to be seen, but promotional financing hasn’t reversed the trend so far.
Chinese competitors hold steady
Tesla’s domestic peers showed mixed results in April, but most maintained significantly higher volumes than Tesla’s 25,956 retail units.
BYD recorded wholesale volume of 321,123 NEVs in April, up 7% from March, though the company posted its eighth consecutive month of year-over-year decline at -15.5%. Li Auto delivered 34,085 vehicles. Xpeng delivered 31,011 units. NIO delivered 29,356 vehicles, up 23% year-over-year — all three exceeding Tesla’s domestic retail figure in China.
Electrek’s Take
We warned about this exact scenario a month ago when we reported on Q1 data, and the pattern has only gotten more pronounced. Every time CPCA releases preliminary wholesale numbers, media outlets report Tesla’s China sales as surging — and every time the retail data comes out a few days later, it tells the opposite story. It happened in Q1, and it happened again in April.
The wholesale number is not fake — Tesla did produce and ship 79,478 vehicles from Shanghai. But reporting that figure as “Tesla China sales” without noting that two-thirds of those vehicles went to other countries is misleading at best. The number that matters for Tesla’s competitive position in China is retail sales, and that number fell 10% year-over-year to just 25,956 units.
China is the world’s largest EV market and the most competitive. It’s important to see Tesla’s true market performance, and it has been declining in China.
The exports have been going to Korea, Europe, Australia, and now Canada, which started accepting Chinese Teslas again. In short, Tesla’s production numbers in China do not indicate Tesla’s health in the Chinese market because it now exports most of the vehicles it makes in China.
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