Asian Tech Press (Dec 1) --A Tesla China executive says its Shanghai factory has localized 90% of its supply chain.

Tesla's global vice president Grace Tao Lin said during a visit to Chinese think tank EV100 on Monday that its Shanghai plant has already localized more than 90% of its supply chain.

Notably, a press release issued by China EV100 on its WeChat official account platform on Wednesday also mentioned, as Tao said, that Tesla's Shanghai plant could achieve its annual production target of 500,000 vehicles this year alone, with very high production efficiency.

Shortly after, however, China EV100 updated the content to remove the figure for the annual production target. And it is unclear why the deletion was made.

As Reuters reported, a Tesla representative told the news outlet that the figure was inaccurate, without elaborating further, but referred to the company's third-quarter results during which it said the Shanghai plant's potential annual output exceeded 450,000.

In September, Tesla's Shanghai plant is expected to produce 300,000 vehicles in the first nine months of the year. Despite the global chip shortage, the factory saw a peak in deliveries at the end of the third quarter. In addition to meeting domestic demand in China, the Shanghai plant produces Tesla Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV for overseas markets such as Germany and Japan.

Tesla recently invested 1.2 billion yuan ($188.6 million) in the Shanghai plant for the latest round of expansions to increase the plant's capacity. Once the upgrade is complete, Tesla China intends to increase its capacity to 1 million to 1.5 million units per year.

(US$1 = 6.3626 yuan)