Tesla Partners With Airlines Group To Give Free Flights To Chinese Customers

China is, and will remain, the largest market in the world for electric vehicles (EVs) of all kinds, especially the premium luxury brands made by Tesla Inc.

It’s no small wonder Tesla is spending more than $5 billion to build Gigafactory 3, its first overseas factory, at Shanghai. Gigafactory 3 is expected to start producing its first EVs (the Model 3 and eventually, the Model Y) by November.

The challenge now is selling the upwards of 3,000 EVs Gigafactory 3 is expected to assemble every month starting in 2020.

Tesla now plans to introduce a clever marketing ploy to promote its all-electric, world-beating EVs to Chinese consumers, who are among its most ardent. Tesla will offer an opportunity to win free airfare tickets around the Asia-Pacific, and 5-day test drives in its EVs, in a major promo campaign recently revealed by a social media user.

The Tesla promo will partner with the Star Alliance, the world's second largest global airline alliance now consisting of 28 airlines. Among the alliance’s members are Air China, United, ANA, Lufthansa, Asiana Airlines, SAS, Thai Airways, Lot Polish Airlines, Swissair and Turkish Airlines.

The promo will work along with others already in the pipeline. In late May, Tesla opened pre-orders for its Made-in-China Model 3. It said deliveries of the Model 3 will likely begin from November 2019 to March 2020.

There are reports in some Chinese media outlets that Gigafactory might start delivering EVs as early as September. These run counter to Musk’s own pronouncement deliveries are scheduled for November.

In mid-July, Morgan Stanley issued positive reviews about construction and supply chain progress at the Gigafactory 3, saying this massive facility will make Tesla “the leading luxury EV player in China.”

It expect the Chinese EV market to remain highly competitive and see Tesla's China volume peaking at 254,000 units sold in 2024, before falling to the 160,000 to 170,000 range by 2030. It also expects China to account for fewer than 200,000 EV deliveries annually by 2022.