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Recently, a netizen posted a screenshot of a chat with Ms. Tao Lin, vice president of Tesla in China, on the social platform. From the picture, you can see that her conversation is about "when will the steering wheel heating function be turned on in the standard battery life Model 3?". Tesla and Tao Lin responded to this and is in preparation for its recent launch.

At present, the Tesla Model 3 on sale in the domestic market is divided into two models: the standard life upgrade version and the Performance high performance version, of which the Performance high performance version comes standard with the steering wheel heating function, and the standard life upgrade version also supports this function, but the software system is required. Tesla Model 3 can now turn on the steering wheel heating function through OTA in Europe, while the Model 3 produced by the Shanghai factory since January 1, 2021 also supports secondary functions. However, the launch date of the feature in China has not yet been announced. Tesla has officially said that the heated steering wheel is used as standard equipment for Model 3 long-lasting and Performance models. The vehicle needs to use software version 2020.48 or later to have the steering wheel heating option.

It is worth noting that in September 2020, Tesla launched the rear seat heating function for the standard battery life upgrade version of Model 3, which can be obtained through the OTA upgrade. It is expected that the price of unlocking the steering wheel heating will be close to $300 with reference to its announced unlocking rear seat heating function. For the need to pay to turn on the Model 3 steering wheel heating function, some netizens said that the domestic Model 3 originally supported the steering wheel heating function in hardware, but there was no need to change the steering wheel when it was launched in the later stage, only Tesla's background operation was needed to unlock it. You have to pay for it. Another netizen said: I think it's good to lower the threshold for buying a car and follow up on-demand subscription.

It is understood that the domestic version of Model 3 was released in 2019 and was hot pursued by the market after its listing. According to relevant data, the retail volume of Tesla in China reached 53153 in September, an increase of more than 300% compared with the same month and the previous month. Tesla's revenue in the Chinese market reached 3.113 billion US dollars in the third quarter of this year, up 78.5% from the same period last year. In the first three quarters, Tesla achieved revenue of US $9.015 billion in China, accounting for about 25% of Tesla's global income, and this figure has exceeded Tesla's annual income of US $6.662 billion in China last year. Tesla Musk earlier set a sales target of "annual sales of 20 million vehicles by 2030" at Tesla's 2021 shareholders' meeting. Some industry insiders have calculated that if Musk wants to achieve this sales target, that means that for every three electric cars sold in the world, two electric cars will be Tesla. As for the current situation of Tesla, Musk also said that Tesla is mainly a production capacity problem rather than a demand problem.

Analysts at Wedbush, a US investment bank, have said, "with global electric vehicle demand further affected in the next 12 to 18 months, Tesla still has a lot of growth momentum by 2022, and performance growth and profitability should accelerate." It is not difficult to see that even though Tesla's steering wheel heating function needs to be unlocked for a fee, it should not affect its sales.

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