Tesla, a California-based electric car company plans a surprise announcement in China on May 31. The company is ready to reveal the prices of its Model 3 before it starts the manufacturing of cars in China.

Recently, the company launched an online contest in Weibo, a Chinese social network, for people to guess the price of its cars that will be manufactured in China. The contest suggests that the scheduled announcement involves the Chinese version of the Model 3 cars.

Tesla is making significant progress in its Gigafactory Shanghai. It is planning to build Model 3 vehicles in Shanghai as it hopes that it will reduce costs for the car model in the Chinese market while it increases its production and deliveries.

The company started to construct the Gigafactory Shanghai in January and it is planning to produce 3,000 units of Model 3 cars per week. It is expecting to fully operate between the fourth quarter of this year and the second quarter of 2020.

Tesla said in its fourth-quarter letter to shareholders that local manufacturing is an essential component of the company's ability to provide to customers in the region a truly affordable version of Model 3. The letter also said that its China-based Model 3 production line will come online faster and more efficiently than the line at the company's factory in Fremont, California. It also said that learning from their experience, they can now build a second-generation Model 3 line in China that they expect will be at least 50% cheaper per unit of capacity than their Model 3-related lines in Fremont and at Gigafactory 1.

There are speculations that the company might launch a version of the Model 3 that will specifically cater to the Chinese market. Tesla increased its investment in the world's largest auto market. China has been the source of a large portion of the company's growth in recent years. The company's revenue in China reached $1.8 billion in 2018 which corresponds to 8 percent of its total revenue.

According to Bloomberg's report, Tesla is considering pricing its China-made Model 3 vehicle between 300,000 yuan ($43,400) and 350,000 yuan before subsidies. The company has already started selling the Model3 cars in China, all of them imported from the United States. The company's website said that they started selling the cars at 377,000 yuan, including import duties and value-added taxes. The company has high hopes for its Shanghai Factory as it competes with China's crowded electric vehicles market.