It’s become a familiar ritual: Tesla announces quarterly deliveries that beat expectations, as most everyone (at least in the EV press) expected. It’s a choreographed quarterly concert that keeps Tesla in the news, and keeps the stock price climbing.

This time however, a global pandemic and auto industry slump were in the mix, and there really was some uncertainty as to whether Tesla would make a respectable showing. The California cowboys came through, confirming quarterly deliveries of 90,650. That’s only slightly lower than Q2’s 2019 figure of 95,200, which counts as a huge win under the circumstances.

It’s becoming clear that EV sales (which pretty much means Tesla sales) are going to take much less of a hit from the economic turmoil than ICE vehicles. GM, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, Ford and Audi all saw their deliveries drop more than 30% in Q2.

Here’s what Tesla had to say:

In the second quarter, we produced over 82,000 vehicles and delivered approximately 90,650 vehicles.

While our main factory in Fremont was shut down for much of the quarter, we have successfully ramped production back to prior levels.

Analysts (they of little faith) were predicting deliveries of between 72,000 vehicles (FactSet) and 83,000 vehicles (Bloomberg). The actual numbers caused TSLA stock to soar, and pundits to wax poetic. “A 90,000 delivery number in this COVID lockdown environment is a jaw dropper, and the bulls will run with this as a potential paradigm changer moving ahead,” Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives told MarketWatch.

Sources: Tesla, Electrek, CNBC, MarketWatch