The US electric car pioneer Tesla has in the important car market China reduced its prices again due to sales problems, putting the entire auto sector on the stock market under pressure. In the leading German index Dax, the papers of VW-Holding Porsche SE, Porsche AG, Mercedes-Benz, bmw and Volkswagen the last five places in the Dax with losses of 1.3 to 1.7 percent. Tesla shares traded at a 4 percent discount in premarket US trading.
Dealers justified the subdued mood for the sector with Tesla’s recent price cuts in China. The second price reductions in a short period of time clearly indicate that demand is still sluggish. And that in a market for which there are high expectations of a thorough recovery in the wake of the corona easing. That expectation could ultimately prove deceptive, one trader said.
For the Model 3 and the Model Y, the Americans in the People’s Republic are now asking for more than 10 percent less than last time, as the company announced on its website on Friday. It is the second price reduction since autumn last year. Tesla is facing increasingly strong domestic competition from suppliers such as China BYD, Xpeng or Nio. Before the turn of the year, Mercedes-Benz also had to reduce prices in China for its EQS luxury body, the all-electric version of the flagship S-Class, and for the electric EQE model. Also in Japan Tesla lowered the prices.
Tesla stock had already come under severe pressure during the week due to weaker-than-expected global delivery numbers in the final quarter of 2022. In the past year, the paper had lost two-thirds of its value, partly because Tesla boss Elon Musk (51) shares for the takeover of the short message service Twitter had to put on the market. Tesla is still valued on the stock market at almost 350 billion US dollars – significantly more than Volkswagen (the equivalent of 77 billion dollars), BMW (61 billion dollars) and Mercedes-Benz (75 billion dollars) together.
Skeptical analysts like Bernstein expert Toni Sacconaghi estimate that Tesla could face demand and utilization problems at its factories as competition in its markets increases. The largest markets for the company are still China and the USA, the European plant in Grünheide near Berlin is currently ramping up production.