Tesla is ‘a few thousand’ cars short of its delivery goal with a day left

Tesla is trying to deliver a record 100,000 cars during the third quarter, and with only a day left, sources say that Tesla is currently “a few thousand” cars short of the delivery goal.

Last week, we reported that Elon Musk sent out an email to employees to say that Tesla “has a shot” at delivering a record 100,000 cars this quarter.

The CEO said that net new orders were tracking at 110,000 cars for the quarter, and the difficulty is going to be getting the vehicles in the hands of customers in time for the end of the quarter.

Tesla management has been keeping the actual progress numbers toward the goal secret, but sources say that they have communicated to employees last night that they were “a few thousands” short of the goal with a day left in the quarter.

It is not impossible for them to reach the goal at this point, but it will be extremely difficult.

Sources told Electrek that Tesla has about 3,000 vehicles in inventory throughout North America, but they are not all at the delivery centers ready to be matched with a customer ready to take delivery.

Therefore, Tesla would be lucky to deliver 500 to 1,000 of these vehicles in North America during the last day of the quarter.

Electrek doesn’t have information about inventory in international markets, which could make the difference during the last day.

Some markets like China, Norway, the Netherlands, the UK, and Australia have each been delivering hundreds of cars during some days this quarter.

We will report back if we get more information later today. Otherwise, Tesla is expected to release the official delivery numbers later this week.

Electrek’s Take

I understand that this is kind of vague, but Tesla is being a lot more careful about the information it is giving employees this quarter.

I suppose it all depends on how many they mean by “a few thousands.” In my opinion, it has to be between 2,000 and 5,000 units.

The former is achievable, but the latter would be almost impossible.

But I think another question is, Do they really need to deliver 100,000 cars?

It would be an incredible milestone and would help them look better based on Wall Street’s twisted quarterly way of looking at things, but I am not sure it’s worth the incredible stress that Tesla is putting on employees at the end of every quarter.

In turn, it is inevitably resulting in worse customer service as employees have to spend a lot less time with buyers taking delivery.

Elon said a few times now that he was working on changing that, but they end up at the same place every quarter, just with bigger numbers.

I think the start of production at Gigafactory 3 could help. The new production capacity should enable a more steady flow of vehicles throughout the quarter and alleviate the end-of-quarter rush.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t have a Tesla or want another one? You can win your own brand-new Tesla Model X P100D with $20,000 in the trunk by participating in the Omaze sweepstake that helps GivePower build a solar-powered desalination system in Haiti.