BEIJING, October 25 (TMTPOST)— Tesla is furthering localization in the world’s largest new energy vehicle market and the company’s most important overseas market.

Source: Tesla Greater China

"Tesla Shanghai Research and Development Center and Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory Data Center are officially landed. We will let it roll recently," announced Tesla Greater China on Monday, with a video featuring some of milestones it has achieved these years, such as the first delivery of Model 3 model made in Shanghai Gigafactory and first delivery of China-made Model Y crossover, creation of a Supercharger facility. “We began developing products not only for the China market but for the global vehicle market with the Chinese engineering team here,” said Tesla’s VP of vehicle software, David Lau.

The Research and Development Center is Tesla’s first R&D center beyond its home market the United States, turning over a new leaf in electric vehicle (EV) giant’s localization strategy in China. The center consists of diverse departments involving the whole process of the vehicle development such as vehicle software, hardware, electrical, materials, automobile power and energy engineering. Tesla sets up 28 labs in the center, which currently focus on development of software and hardware, process and technologies in China and joins in the worldwide R&D of AI learning. Boasting “all of its great engineers functioning in one facility”, Tesla China’s R&D center will carry out more original developments in the complete vehicle, charging equipment and energy products, and grow into a comprehensive R&D center with the same scale as its center in U.S.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also disclosed on Monday, Tesla recorded US$3.113 billion of sales in China in the third quarter of the year, rising 78.5% from a year earlier, and it generated a total of US$9.015 billion in the first three quarters, accounting for 25% of its global revenue. Revenue in the three quarters was well more than the annual revenue of US$6.662 billion in China last year. The United States contributes 46.6% of Tesla’s total sales in the third quarte, remaining its largest market with the quarterly sales of US$6.414 billion and a year-over-year increase of 52%.