Tesla delivers 22,000 vehicles to reach lower-end of delivery goal

While Tesla is about to start production of the Model 3, which should see its first production car roll off the production line Friday, the company is still delivering its flagship Model S and Model X.

The company confirmed its delivery numbers for the most recent quarter and it managed to reach the lower-end of delivery goal

They confirmed having delivered “just over 22,000 vehicles in Q2, of which just over 12,000 were Model S and just over 10,000 were Model X” from April through June 2017.

Tesla had been previously guiding a delivery goal of 47,000 to 50,000 vehicles for the first half of the year.  After delivering 25,051 vehicles during the first quarter, it pushes deliveries to “approximately 47,100” according to the company.

It represents a 53% increase over deliveries during the same period last year and both Model S and Model X deliveries were higher than during Q2 2016:

The company attributes hitting the lower end of its guidance to difficulties ramping up production of its latest battery pack, the 100 kWh battery pack.

They wrote in a press release:

“The major factor affecting Tesla’s Q2 deliveries was a severe production shortfall of 100 kWh battery packs, which are made using new technologies on new production lines. The technology challenge grows exponentially with energy density. Until early June, production averaged about 40% below demand. Once this was resolved, June orders and deliveries were strong, ranking as one of the best in Tesla history.”

For the second half of the year, they are guiding higher deliveries for the Model S and Model X – without accounting for Model 3, which will ramp up during the same period.

The company says that orders are still strong and claims that June was ranking as “one of the best in Tesla history.”

They added that they continued the transition to using fully loaded vehicles as service loaners and build their display and test drive fleet of Model X:

“We always want our customers to experience the newest versions of Model S and X while their cars are in service, so we added fully loaded, newly built cars to our service loaner fleet. We always want the service loaner Tesla to be *better* than the customer car being serviced. The customer should never suffer for something that is our fault.

We also finally added a sufficient number of Model X cars to our test drive and display fleet because our stores had been operating with far short of what was needed and, in some cases, none at all. There appears to be substantial untapped sales potential for Model X. It should also be noted that production quality and field reliability of the Model X, for which Tesla has been fairly criticized, have improved dramatically. It is now rare for a newly produced Model X to have initial quality problems.”

Production reached 25,708 vehicles in Q2 for a total of 51,126 vehicles in 2017 so far. The difference is being added to Tesla’s fleet and in transit to customers.