Tesla Heads Confidently Into Q3
Tesla posted their second quarter delivery numbers on July 2nd, and the news looks good across the board.
While Wall Street had predicted that the EV maker would report record deliveries, they missed the mark a bit - instead of 448,000 vehicles, Tesla ended up delivering 466,000. Which is quite a bit higher than last quarter’s record of 422,000.
As expected, the Model 3 and Model Y were the highest numbers on that list - but Tesla’s efforts during the first half of this year have also paid off for the Model S and Model X.
Those two models had been struggling to sell compared to the newer, cheaper models - but with some price cuts the company managed to sell almost all of the Model S and X vehicles they produced.
But the overall increase in both production and delivery numbers means that Tesla’s ramp-up has been paying off.
Ever since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed in the US last August, Tesla has made a gargantuan effort to prepare their facilities to take advantage of all that funding. Factories have been upgraded, staff moved around, vehicle prices have been slashed, and new locations have been announced - and some have already begun construction.
And while these numbers are a good indication that all this work has begun to have an effect - strong Q2 numbers are not what Tesla had in mind for all this extra production power.
The Cybertruck is.
Tesla’s highly anticipated silver pickup truck has been a major focus for the company. They have been working for years on this project, and the first expected delivery date is only two months away - sometime in September.
CEO Elon Musk estimated that the start of production would begin sometime this summer, and not only has that prediction not changed - we haven’t seen or heard anything to suggest it might.
Quite the opposite - we've been seeing prototypes driving around, and parts coming out of GigaTexas - where those 9000 ton Giga Presses are - for weeks now. And we’re getting pretty good signs that they’ve moved on from testing to starting actual production.
According to a report from Tesla observer Joe Tegtmeyer, the Model Y line at Giga Texas will be paused at the beginning of July for about 5 days, as some employees would be reassigned to the Cybertruck line.
Joe also mentions word of a new manufacturing site just south of GigaTexas where some employees will be sent to make seats, or maybe some other sub-assemblies that will be going into the Cybertruck.
And if Tegtmeyer’s information is correct, that means we’re about to see some freshly assembled Cybertrucks coming out of GigaTexas - just as the third quarter starts.
And this is pretty clearly what all this work was about. Extra battery production, the purchase of more storage warehouses, expansion of facilities - all of that was being done so that when the Cybertruck’s production was ready to start, Tesla would have as few roadblocks as possible.
Without all this extra work, it’s possible that Tesla’s production and delivery rates would have taken a bit of a hit with Cybertruck’s production start, as resources were moved around - instead we see that the company’s in a pretty strong place going into Q3 with a new vehicle launch looming.
The second quarter numbers were great - but we should probably expect to see some really outstanding numbers in the next report.