Tesla Teams Up With Chinese Used-Car Companies For Part-Exchange Deals

Cracking the world’s biggest car market has not been as easy as

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by Andreas Tsaousis

January 1, 2015 at 19:55

Cracking the world’s biggest car market has not been as easy as Tesla must have expected. Nevertheless, company CEO Elon Musk is buoyant that he can tap into the potential the Model S has in China, so he is shaking things up a bit.

A couple of weeks ago, Tesla’s head of local operations resigned less than a year into her job. Now, Bloomberg reports that the electric vehicle auto maker is teaming up with used-car dealers in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou to facilitate the part-exchange of prospective customers’ current set of wheels.

The company will deduct the value of the sale from the price of a new Model S, which starts from 648,000 Yuan (US$104,000). Right now, Tesla has nine stores/service centers in China and 700 charging stations in 70 cities across the country, which the company says is its largest network after the US.

Musk has stated that he wants to start building the Model S locally in four years tops. This won’t happen until the infrastructure is in place, so Tesla is expanding its charging stations network in cooperation with local companies.