According to news reports, Tesla Inc. plans to raise the price of its Model 3 car in the European Union starting in July. This is because the EU will put import taxes on cars made in China, the electric car company said on its website on Thursday.
Reports from Reuters and others say that the message was posted on Tesla’s TSLA, +3.88% website for countries like Germany, France, Ireland, Belgium, and Hungary.
“We expect that we will have to raise the prices of Model 3 cars starting July 1, 2024.” The message said, “This is because more import taxes are likely to be put on electric cars made in China and sold in the EU.”
The business did not say how much the prices would go up. According to Chinese state media cited by CNBC, Tesla shipped 947,000 cars from its Shanghai factory in 2023. Of those, 600,000 went to China and the rest were sent to other countries.
This comes a day after the European Commission said it would put new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs). This was because, according to Dow Jones Newswires, a preliminary investigation found that EU manufacturers were unfairly hurt by state subsidies.
It also comes at a time when Tesla shareholders are voting on two controversial plans that could move the company to Texas and pay Elon Musk $56 billion for his work as CEO.
Musk was already saying on X, which used to be Twitter, that both plans were winners. Musk put up two charts that showed how many votes each proposal had gotten so far and said, “Both Tesla shareholder resolutions are currently passing by wide margins!” Thank you for your help!!
Friday, the vote will end at 4:30 p.m. Central Daylight Time, which is 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time. This is the same time zone that Tesla’s headquarters in Austin, Texas use.
A judge in Delaware threw out what she called a “unfathomable” pay package in February because she was worried about the CEO’s influence on the decision. The judge said this was because the board was “swept up by rhetoric” about “Musk’s superstar appeal.”
That decision is what made Musk suggest moving the company’s incorporation to Texas instead of Delaware, where the laws are stricter and more established.
CalPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, said in a statement on Wednesday that it would vote against Musk’s pay package because it is worth more than 140 times the annual pay given to similar CEOs who do a good job.
There are concerns that a vote against the resolution could hurt Tesla’s share price because Musk has said in the past that he might focus on developing AI technologies outside of Tesla if shareholders don’t agree with his pay package.
Tesla stock went up 5% in early trading, but it is down 29% for the year so far, while the S&P 500 SPX, +0.85% has gone up 13.7%.
