The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published the approval on its website on Monday.

Tesla, now sells its Model 3 electric cars in China and has been building new car manufacturing capacity in Shanghai to make its Model Y SUVs. It applied for the Shanghai-made Model Y SUV sales permission earlier this month.

It started delivering vehicles made in its Shanghai factory last December and sold more than 13,000 vehicles in China in October.

The company has started exporting China-made Model 3 cars to Europe and said last week it plans to also start making electric vehicle chargers in China in 2021.

(Reporting by Yilei Sun in Beijing and Brenda Goh in Shanghai; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Stephen Coates)

By Yilei Sun and Brenda Goh