Adam Minter, Columnist

Tesla Doesn’t Need to Sell Cars in China to Succeed There

The world’s biggest auto market is also where the company’s hopes of developing car-sharing services could have their best chance.

January 16, 2019 at 12:00 AM UTC

By Adam Minter

Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of sports. He is the author, most recently, of “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale."

Musk will be back in Shanghai.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

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When Elon Musk broke ground on Tesla Inc.’s Gigafactory in Shanghai earlier this month, he wasn’t just thinking about how many Teslas he’ll sell in China. He was thinking about how many he might be able to share.

Musk isn’t alone. Global automobile manufacturers are scrambling to develop services that will allow Chinese car owners to rent out their vehicles when they’re not driving them. According to one recent analysis, such services could hire out as many as 2 million cars in 2020, up from roughly 100,000 in 2017. Indeed, there’s a growing case to be made that car-sharing represents the future of transport in China, and China could determine the future of car-sharing.