TESLA

Another Tesla record: it delivered over 466,000 cars and is approaching 2 million production per year

Company Tesla reports production and delivery results usually very shortly after the end of the quarter. The spring season has just ended, so here we have the values ​​for Q2/23. According to the company, 19,489 Model S/X cars and 460,211 Model 3/Y cars were produced, making the total 479,700 cars produced. However, the production again quite exceeds the deliveries, which they made in aggregate 466,140 cars.

In that number we have 19,255 Model S/X, which is again amazing that 11 and 8 year old cars are still selling so well. The record values ​​in the past were well over 25,000, but considering the age, this is a really high number (in addition, the highest in the last 4 years). To give you an idea, Porsche usually delivers around 9-10 thousand Taycans per quarter (but let’s not forget that Tesla counts Model S and Model X in one). As for the Models 3 and Y, 446,915 units were delivered.

What do these numbers actually mean? Last year (for the year 2022), Tesla delivered 1.31 million cars, but for the last four quarters (Q3/22 – Q2/23) we are already talking about less than 1.64 million cars. Tesla talks about the fact that it wants to grow by an average of 50% per year (sometimes it can be more, sometimes less like last year, but it is supposed to be a long-term trend). According to him, based on the figures from 2019 (380 thousand cars), the production should reach 1.92 million cars this year. Is such a thing real? As we can see, less than 300,000 cars have been moving away from this goal in the last 12 months, and it is a question of whether production can rise like this or not.

If we assume a similar growth as in the last 4 years, then polynomial and exponential extrapolations indicate numbers of around 1.96 million cars (which was already indicated by last year’s numbers, so nothing changes), which would slightly exceed Musk and his company’s long-term goal . It would also mean surpassing the more sober estimates, which were headed more towards 1.85 million. In Q3/23, both models agree in the estimated deliveries of around 510,000 (Tesla could thus exceed half a million deliveries per quarter for the first time), while Q4/23 then comes out to around 555-565,000. It probably won’t stick to the extrapolated curves faithfully (mostly it’s quite accurate, but sometimes there are very accurate quarters), but we can probably expect about 490-530 in the next quarter and 530-590 in the last quarter of this year.

Tesla is preparing two major innovations for the near future. The Tesla Cybertruck is finally set to go into production, albeit in limited quantities. This is supposed to happen at the end of August, so it probably won’t mix up the numbers much this quarter. However, Tesla plans to produce up to 375,000 cars per year, i.e. over 90,000 per quarter. But it will take a few quarters before it reaches that number.

Another novelty will be the facelift of the Tesla Model 3 called Highland. It could get narrower front lights and improved technology. E.g. the Standard Range version once started with a 55kWh battery, later switched to 60kWh, and the new variant is to receive CATL’s M3P (LFP) battery with 66kWh. This means roughly 20% more range than the original version (and a 10% increase over the current one). It can be assumed that the Standard Range will reach somewhere between 540-550 km from today’s 491 km according to WLTP. And that’s a very interesting number for a short-range version.

Milan Šurkala