Elon Musk is backtracking from a jarring change in Tesla Inc’s retailing strategy, which is keeping many of the company’s stores open and raising the prices of its electric cars as a result.

Tesla will increase the cost of its EVs by an average of about 3 per cent after re-considering a plan announced just 10 days earlier to wind down most of its physical stores. In a blog post, the company said that about half the locations it was planning to close will now stay open. Musk blindsided many sales personnel at the company with the store closings, and some investors and analysts feared the cost-cutting measures sent troubling signals about the company’s sales and cash position.

“The dramatically altering strategic decisions doesn’t lend a lot of confidence,” Joe Spak, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote on Monday in a note. He added, “ Tesla is making decisions on the fly and reacting to very short-term factors.”

Tesla fell 0.2 per cent to $283.50 as of 9:30 a.m. on Monday in New York. The shares erased gains in pre-market trading after the company announced in a regulatory filing that it was issuing about $13.8 million in stock, in connection with an acquisition of car-hauling trucks and trailers from a carrier company north of Los Angeles.

Tesla said that it is sticking to plans for all sales to be done online, with more thinly staffed stores playing the role of coaching consumers on how to order cars on their phones. The company will continue to offer the $35,000 version of the Model 3 sedan car at the same price point and will increase the cost of other variants of the sedan. The Model S and Model X also will be made more expensive, and buyers will have a week to place orders before prices rise.

Last week, Tesla announced it had secured at least $521 million in loans from Chinese banks to build a vehicle and battery factory in Shanghai. It also amended a separate asset-backed credit agreement, increasing how much it can borrow by as much as $700 million.

Tesla Inc is in talks about ordering rechargeable batteries from top Chinese producer Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL) to power the Model 3 cars that the US electric automaker will start assembling at its new factory near Shanghai, said sources familiar with the matter.

The CATL has discussed the required specifications for the batteries with Tesla officials, they claimed, asking not to be named. There is still no guarentee that an agreement will be reached, the sources added.

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