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Tesla taps into Chinese TikTok for social media-based sales and customer support
Tesla may have temporarily shut down its electric vehicle factory in Shanghai due to the coronavirus outbreak, but the electric car company has taken to other channels to reach its enthusiastic market in China. More specifically, Tesla is using Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, to push knowledge-based content with the goal of driving more sales and deliver customer support to new and existing Tesla owners.
A tweet posted by Tesla owner and electric car enthusiast @Ray4Tesla shows Tesla stores in China are conducting livestreams that put the spotlight on Tesla vehicles and their features. Each store has its own account to stream videos that cover a variety of topics that are of interest to its customers.
Since Chinese mostly stay home these days, @teslacn is quick to come up this ingenious idea to reach ?? consumers thru Douyin (Tik Tok) to livestream sales reps (each store has its own account) featuring Tesla vehicles followed by Q&A. This is a free & powerful marketing tool. pic.twitter.com/DK7QepkGsc
— Ray4️⃣Tesla⚡️?☀️? (@ray4tesla) February 2, 2020
For instance, the Tesla Experience Center in Changsha is conducting live-streamed tours of the Model 3, followed by a Q&A call that allows potential buyers to interact directly with the sales representatives. Other broadcasts include tutorials to inform new buyers of charging and how to use Tesla’s Autopilot driving-assist feature, testimonials from the first Made-in-China Model 3 owners, and demonstrations of Tesla vehicles undergoing energy consumption tests.
Allan Wang, General Manager at Tesla China, has posted a comprehensive schedule of livestreams by each Tesla store on his Weibo page.
Tesla may have struggled with customer service in the US, but the all-electric car company seems to be making sure it doesn’t make the same mistakes in China. Considering China is the largest electric vehicle market in the world, it only makes sense for Tesla to turn to powerful yet severely underused social media channels that allow it to provide a more personalized level of service to a new base of customers.
Douyin, the Chinese version of video app TikTok, is one of the most popular social media apps in China. In its annual earnings report, Douyin parent company ByteDance announced that the app has grown to 400 million active users every day in 2019, up from 250 million daily active users at the beginning of last year. Marketing research firm eMarketer also said that Douyin’s growth outpaces that of earlier players Weibo and WeChat.
Douyin’s claim to fame is its emphasis on knowledge-based content, which it says is the most consumed type of content on its app in 2019. It’s also the largest mobile social network in China, with 67.9 percent of Chinese social network users actively on Douyin. The potential for using Douyin is huge, as it allows Tesla to provide educational broadcasts and reach a broad swath of the Chinese market for free while providing customers a closer look at Tesla’s products and company values.
No doubt, Shanghai-based Tesla competitor Nio recognizes Douyin as a sales and customer service tool, having taken a page out of Tesla’s playbook and creating its own Douyin accounts as well.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) closed at an all-time high on Tuesday, jumping over 3 percent during the day and finishing at $489.88.
The price beats the previous record close, which was $479.86.
Shares have had a crazy year, dipping more than 40 percent from the start of the year. The stock then started to recover once again around late April, when its price started to climb back up from the low $200 level.
This week, Tesla started to climb toward its highest levels ever, as it was revealed on Sunday that the company was testing driverless Robotaxis in Austin. The spike in value pushed the company’s valuation to $1.63 trillion.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
It is the seventh-most valuable company on the market currently, trailing Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.
Shares closed up $14.57 today, up over 3 percent.
The stock has gone through a lot this year, as previously mentioned. Shares tumbled in Q1 due to CEO Elon Musk’s involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which pulled his attention away from his companies and left a major overhang on their valuations.
However, things started to rebound halfway through the year, and as the government started to phase out the $7,500 tax credit, demand spiked as consumers tried to take advantage of it.
Q3 deliveries were the highest in company history, and Tesla responded to the loss of the tax credit with the launch of the Model 3 and Model Y Standard.
Additionally, analysts have announced high expectations this week for the company on Wall Street as Robotaxi continues to be the focus. With autonomy within Tesla’s sights, things are moving in the direction of Robotaxi being a major catalyst for growth on the Street in the coming year.
Elon Musk
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, analyst says
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, Mark Delaney of Goldman Sachs says.
Tesla is in the process of rolling out its Robotaxi platform to areas outside of Austin and the California Bay Area. It has plans to launch in five additional cities, including Houston, Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.
However, the company’s expansion is not what the focus needs to be, according to Delaney. It’s the speed of deployment.
The analyst said:
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Profitability will come as the Robotaxi fleet expands. Making that money will be dependent on when Tesla can initiate rides in more areas, giving more customers access to the program.
There are some additional things that the company needs to make happen ahead of the major Robotaxi expansion, one of those things is launching driverless rides in Austin, the first city in which it launched the program.
This week, Tesla started testing driverless Robotaxi rides in Austin, as two different Model Y units were spotted with no occupants, a huge step in the company’s plans for the ride-sharing platform.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
CEO Elon Musk has been hoping to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis in Austin for several months, first mentioning the plan to have them out by the end of 2025 in September. He confirmed on Sunday that Tesla had officially removed vehicle occupants and started testing truly unsupervised rides.
Although Safety Monitors in Austin have been sitting in the passenger’s seat, they have still had the ability to override things in case of an emergency. After all, the ultimate goal was safety and avoiding any accidents or injuries.
Goldman Sachs reiterated its ‘Neutral’ rating and its $400 price target. Delaney said, “Tesla is making progress with its autonomous technology,” and recent developments make it evident that this is true.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets bold Robotaxi prediction from Wall Street firm
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) received a bold Robotaxi prediction from Morgan Stanley, which anticipates a dramatic increase in the size of the company’s autonomous ride-hailing suite in the coming years.
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Percoco dug into the Robotaxi fleet and its expansion in the coming years in his latest note, released on Tuesday. The firm expects Tesla to increase the Robotaxi fleet size to 1,000 vehicles in 2026. However, that’s small-scale compared to what they expect from Tesla in a decade.
Tesla expands Robotaxi app access once again, this time on a global scale
By 2035, Morgan Stanley believes there will be one million Robotaxis on the road across multiple cities, a major jump and a considerable fleet size. We assume this means the fleet of vehicles Tesla will operate internally, and not including passenger-owned vehicles that could be added through software updates.
He also listed three specific catalysts that investors should pay attention to, as these will represent the company being on track to achieve its Robotaxi dreams:
- Opening Robotaxi to the public without a Safety Monitor. Timing is unclear, but it appears that Tesla is getting closer by the day.
- Improvement in safety metrics without the Safety Monitor. Tesla’s ability to improve its safety metrics as it scales miles driven without the Safety Monitor is imperative as it looks to scale in new states and cities in 2026.
- Cybercab start of production, targeted for April 2026. Tesla’s Cybercab is a purpose-built vehicle (no steering wheel or pedals, only two seats) that is expected to be produced through its state-of-the-art unboxed manufacturing process, offering further cost reductions and thus accelerating adoption over time.
Robotaxi stands to be one of Tesla’s most significant revenue contributors, especially as the company plans to continue expanding its ride-hailing service across the world in the coming years.
Its current deployment strategy is controlled and conservative to avoid any drastic and potentially program-ruining incidents.
So far, the program, which is active in Austin and the California Bay Area, has been widely successful.
Tesla stock closes at all-time high on heels of Robotaxi progress
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, analyst says
