Tesla's June China-made EV sales see first rise in 9 months, but quarterly fall continues

BEIJING (Reuters) -Tesla's sales of its China-made electric vehicles edged up 0.8% in June from a year earlier, snapping an eight-month losing streak, but they continued to fall on a quarterly basis in the face of lower-cost new models from its Chinese rivals.

Deliveries of Model 3 and Model Y vehicles made in its Shanghai factory, including both China sales and exports to Europe and other markets, rose 16.1% from May to 71,599 units, data from the China Passenger Car Association showed on Wednesday.

By comparison, global car sales for BYD, Tesla's biggest Chinese rival, increased 11% year-on-year to 377,628 units last month.

Tesla recorded the fastest-ever model ramp-up with just six weeks to full production of the refreshed Model Y in its largest manufacturing hub in Shanghai earlier this year.

But its sales in China and Europe have been cooling and mounting pressures from rivals and the political backlash against CEO Elon Musk are dragging on demand.

Sales of its China-made EVs in the April-June period slid 6.8% on-year, the third quarterly decline in a row.

Tesla's China-made EVs accounted for 51.3% of its global deliveries in the first quarter.

The U.S. EV maker is expected to report another fall in global quarterly deliveries later on Wednesday.

For all of 2025, Tesla's EV sales are expected to drop 10% this year to make up 13% of the global market, while BYD's global EV sales are forecast to grow by 45% to a record high or one-fifth of the world's total, according to Counterpoint Research.

Xiaomi's new YU7 SUV, priced from 253,500 yuan ($35,396), nearly 4% below the Model Y, the best-selling SUV in China in May, received exceptionally strong initial orders.

The SU7 sedan, the first EV from the smartphone maker turned automaker, has outsold Tesla's Model 3 on a monthly basis since December.

Tesla has yet to further cut prices in China to fend off the YU7, as some analysts have speculated it may do. Instead, it raised the price of the long-range variant of Model 3 by 3.6% in China on Tuesday and upgraded the range by 40 km to 753 km (468 miles).

($1 = 7.1618 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Qiaoyi Li, Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh, Editing by Louise Heavens and Kim Coghill)