Tesla Searching For Director, Staff As It Plans To Set Up Design Studio In China: Reuters

Tesla Model Y

Tesla Inc TSLA is planning to set up a design studio in China to tailor its electric vehicles to Chinese tastes, Reuters reported.

Full Studio: Citing three unnamed people with knowledge of the matter, Reuters said the "full function" studio would be in Shanghai or Beijing.

The plans are not near finalization yet as the company keeps an eye on U.S.-China tensions. But Tesla has been searching for a director and others to staff the studio, the sources said. Headhunters have been working since September and using LinkedIn as a channel for finding candidates.

Strategic Market: China is the second biggest market for Tesla, after the U.S., and the company's Shanghai Gigafactory, opened just over a year ago in late 2019, attests to the importance of the country to the world's biggest electric vehicle maker.

Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives has said described EV demand in China as "white hot," and in November the firm predicted that 40% of Tesla sales could come from China by 2022.

Orders for the company's Model Y, produced in Shanghai, reportedly ate up the full first quarter's worth of supply within days, just after opening up a web page for orders at the start of the year.

Two of the sources in the Reuters exclusive said one possible vehicle the new studio would work on is a $25,000, high-volume car, adding support to other recent reports of such plans and which Tesla CEO Elon Musk has talked about for some time.

Photo courtesy of Tesla.