Tesla has denied that it plans to start selling the Cybertruck electric pickup truck in China on January 1, after recent rumors surfaced.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has once again denied that the Cybertruck will be brought to China, as new rumors surfaced.
Asked if there were any plans to begin sales of the Cybertruck electric pickup truck in China on January 1, a Tesla China source said it was false information and that โthere is no such plan for January 1,โ local media outlet National Business Daily (NBD) reported today.
There have been recent rumors that the Tesla Cybertruck would be officially launched in China, with sales scheduled to officially begin on January 1, 2025, the report said.
Tesla’s Chinese website has been updated with product information for the Cybertruck, which shows three trims — Cyberbeast, all-wheel-drive, and rear-wheel-drive, the brief report noted.
Earlier this month, rumors surfaced that the Cybertruck would soon be brought to China through official channels.
On December 2, a Jiemian report cited Tesla’s China team as saying that the EV maker had no plans to sell the model in China at this time.
Subsequently, Tesla filed for the energy consumption measurement for the Cybertruck at China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), and on December 11 it received the automobile energy consumption label.
The Cybertruck was categorized as an M1 passenger car with a range of 618 kilometers in MIIT’s database, according to information in the database.
This once again sparked speculation that the Cybertruck could be introduced to China, however, the filing was then quickly revoked for unknown reasons.
Tesla released the Cybertruck in November 2019 and began deliveries of the model on November 30, 2023 in the United States.
The company toured the Cybertruck in several Chinese cities at the end of January this year, emphasizing at the time that it was a crossover wagon in an attempt to downplay its pickup truck character.
Pickup trucks are categorized as light vans in China, and are subject to a number of restrictions that have kept sales low compared with passenger car models including sedans, SUVs (sport utility vehicles) and MPVs (multi-purpose vehicles).
In the January-November period this year, China’s pickup truck sales were 471,000 units, up 1 percent year-on-year, according to the China Passenger Car As-sociation (CPCA).
New energy pickup trucks sold 10,500 units in the January-November period, up 58 percent from a year earlier.
โGetting Cybertruck road legal in China would be very difficult, but we could ship some prototypes over for display,โ Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on January 14 on X, the social media platform he owns.
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