Tesla investors enjoy record high as first China deliveries set to start

The good news for electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla kept rolling in at the end of the week with some analysts beginning to wonder out loud whether they may not have gone too far with their skepticism of the company.

On Friday, Chinese authorities announced that Tesla had been granted an exemption on its 10.0% purchase tax on sales of its locally-made Model 3 sedans. That was on top of a roughly $3,600 government subsidy per car clinched earlier in the same month.

Just as well, as according to Bloomberg, deliveries of the first Model 3 sedans built at its Shanghai gigafactory were set to begin on the following Monday.

In October, Tesla had announced that the Model 3 would go on sale for approximately $50,000 apiece and there was speculation that less expensive local components and labour might drop the price to $40,000 or less.

Five days earlier, citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that the carmaker announced that it had inked $1.4bn in financing for its new Shanghai factory with a group of local banks.

Registrations of Tesla cars hit a five-month high of 5,597 in November, versus 393 one year ago.

China was the world's largest markets for both electric cars and automobiles in general.

Tesla boss, Elon Musk, had in the past predicted that production at its Shanghai plant would reach around 1.000 cars per week by year's end.

Strong demand in the US and especially in Europe led Wedush Securities analyst, Dan Ives, on Thursday, to mark up his target price for Tesla's shares from $270.0 to $370.0.

Ives told clients that demand from those two markets should allow the company to "comfortably" meet its fiscal year 2019 guidance for between 360-400,000 deliveries, for growth of 45-0-65.0%.

Nonetheless, while he conceded that he was increasingly close to believing in the carmaker's turnaround story, for the moment at least he prefered to take a wait-and-see approach and reiterated his 'neutral' recommendation for the shares.

As of 1656 GMT, shares of Tesla were trading higher by 0.11% to $431.41, having rocketed by about 141.0% since their most recent lows reached on 3 June at $178.97 as short-sellers were forced to cover their short positions against the stock.

Earlier in the session, the shares had hit a fresh record high of $435.31.