Tesla’s recently announced production and delivery figures for the second quarter of 2016 point to a battery that’s either half-full or half-empty, depending on your outlook. On one hand, Q2 production and deliveries both fell slightly short of projections.
On the other hand, production continues to ramp up quickly. While Q2 production of 18,345 units fell short of the projected 20,000, it still represents an increase of 20% from Q1. At the end of the quarter, Tesla says it was consistently producing almost 2,000 vehicles per week. It expects weekly output to reach 2,200 in Q3 and 2,400 in Q4, and says that “current order rate trends and backlog support production at those levels.”
The company is standing by its delivery forecast of about 50,000 cars in the second half of 2016, approximately equal to all of 2015.
With the rate of production ramping up so quickly, it wouldn’t be surprising to see some bottlenecks in the delivery process, and that’s just what Tesla says is happening. Q2 deliveries of 14,370 vehicles (9,745 Model S and 4,625 Model X) missed the projected figure of 17,000, partly because as many as 5,150 vehicles were still in transit to customers at the end of the quarter.
Tesla’s production ramp-up is being watched closely, and Wall Street usually takes a dim view of missing quarterly projections. However, Teflon Tesla’s stock saw only a brief stumble on the news, and soon recovered.
Meanwhile, the press is full of ominous warnings about Tesla and autonomous vehicles in general, after the tragic crash in Florida, but investors don’t seem worried – TSLA has moved little either way since the news broke last week.
Source: Tesla , Forbes, The Verge