A document published online by the Chinese Tesla supplier Aotecar reveals that the U.S. electric vehicle automaker has ordered 450,000 heat pumps for its Model Y and Model 3 cars.
According to this document, which is completely in the Chinese language, 200,000 heat pump order production and deliveries had already started earlier this year in January. The 450k heat pump production at the Tesla supplier just started last month.
Looking at the document’s Google translated screenshot (below), the order seems to be specific to Tesla’s Gigafactory Shanghai. But looking at the magnitude of this order, Tesla might just import it for use in the U.S. made Tesla Model Y and Model 3 vehicles.
Trend; in terms of new customers, the company has won another model order from a well-known North American electric vehicle manufacturer in China.
The output is very large, and it has been mass-produced in August 2020. Since 2020, the domestic models of the customer’s Shanghai plant have been put on the market.
Good response, excellent sales performance, and expected high sales, which provided a guarantee for the company’s future sales of products.
On the other hand, the acceptance of heat pump air-conditioning systems by other domestic medium and high-end new energy automobile manufacturers have greatly increased, and the company has received many orders for new models.
Auto-Translated by Google. Excerpt from Page 35 of the Aotecar PDF.
Ray who is a Tesla owner, enthusiast, investor, and active community member from China was the first to explore and post this information online, he tweeted:
Rumor has it that the newly built Tesla Model 3 cars will have the heat pump installed in them. But this information still has to be validated with a real Tesla Model 3 equipped with a heat pump.
As Elon Musk announced over the past weekend that there will be many exciting things revealed at the upcoming Battery Day. The migration of the Tesla Model Y heat pump to the Model 3 might also be one of those unveilings.
Since Tesla practices the “Continuous Improvement” work ethic in its true sense. The migration of better thermal system management for both the battery pack from the Model Y to Model 3 is ultimately inevitable.
Possible import for U.S. Tesla Model 3 and Model Y cars
I had to set the resolution of Sandy Munro Tesla Model Y teardown’s final video to 4K in order to see where Tesla had imported the heat pump from. As I zoomed-in the following picture, it was revealed that the heat pumps installed in Model Ys were made in Japan.
This year Tesla China produced a total of 69,178 Model 3 cars till August and Tesla Model Y production has yet to start at Giga Shanghai. 450,000 heat pumps is a huge number and it does not look like these will only be used by Made-in-China Teslas.
Also, the previous order of 200,000 heat pumps is still underutilized, the total number of pumps produced and to be delivered to Tesla is 650,000.
Looks like a significant number of these Made-in-China heat pumps will be installed in the Made in the United States Model Y and Model 3s.
Using China-made parts in Teslas is not a new thing like the component attached to the famous Octovalve has the “Made in China” laser engraved on it (see photo below).
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