The closure, for two weeks, will allow an upgrade to increase production by 5000 units a week to 8000 Model 3s and 14,000 Model Ys. Australian Teslas are sourced from China.

Reuters, quoting Tesla’s website, said that customers in Australia will now have to wait until the first quarter of 2023 for their Model Ys, while those in Europe can only pick up their cars at the earliest in the fourth quarter of this year.

For buyers in China, the waiting time for Chinese-made Tesla cars is between 10 and 24 weeks, the website showed.

The delay follows a two-month lockdown in Shanghai because of COVID and coincides with postponed deliveries of the Model Y from Tesla’s Giga Berlin factory caused by technical problems with the vehicles’ drivetrains.

Production at the Berlin factory, which supplies Europe, had been accelerated because of lockdown-related interruptions at the Shanghai factory, but has now been slowed by the drivetrain issue.

Reuters reports that in Europe there were an increasing number of reports from customers that some of the planned deliveries from Giga Berlin had been cancelled – sometimes only after the customers had turned up at the service centre on the agreed collection date.

The news agency said that the delayed deliveries from Giga Berlin “appear to be due to a problem with the drive unit delivered from China.”

“Although further details about the defect in the rear drive unit have not been revealed, it is said to be a ‘safety-relevant defect’ that cannot be remedied by a software update,” it said.

“This was confirmed by several publications that at least one customer in Norway was unable to drive their Tesla cars because of the problem and must now wait for new parts.” 

There are also different reports about the extent of the delivery stoppage at Giga Berlin. In some cases, Tesla is said to have informed customers that no Model Ys were currently being delivered from Germany. In other cases, it is said only some vehicles were affected. 

“For most customers, the new delivery date was pushed back by about a month to the end of July; for others, dates will probably be given in a few days.”

Last year, Tesla’s China-made cars, which were sold in China and to overseas markets such as Europe and Australia, accounted for about half of the 936,000 vehicles it delivered globally, based on Reuters’ calculations using China Passenger Car Association data.

Tesla Shanghai Plant

By Neil Dowling