Tesla delays some US deliveries to next year in end-of-year rush

Tesla is delaying some deliveries to next year in the US as part of their end-of-year rush to deliver all inventory, and it’s going to cost buyers $1,875.

Like every quarter, Tesla has a rush to deliver as many vehicles as possible in order to present better financial results.

But this quarter is also important for US buyers since they need to take delivery by the end of the year in order to get the $1,875 federal tax credit for electric vehicles before it’s completely phased out.

In November, Tesla warned customers that they need to place their orders to take delivery by the end of the year.

CEO Elon Musk also said that it was critical for Tesla to deliver all cars in inventory by the end of the year.

Several US Tesla buyers told Electrek that Tesla informed them this weekend that they will not be able to deliver their cars by the end of 2019.

The only choice they were given is to take delivery early next year, without access to the $1,875 federal tax credit, or cancel their order.

Unlike when Tesla was first affected by the phase-out of the tax credit, it doesn’t look like Tesla plans to compensate for the reduced incentive with a price cut.

Earlier this month, Musk said that Tesla’s end-of-the-year push was “intense,” and some regions had already started to run out of inventory.

Electrek’s Take

This is a “good news, bad news” situation.

For Tesla, it means that they are running out of cars, and therefore, the automaker should be getting close to its goal of delivering all inventory — in the US, at least.

But for customers, this is a real problem if you were budgeting for the incentive.

As it has been the case for the last few quarters, Tesla is having some logistical issues matching demand with its inventory.

This is something that Tesla is going to fix with more production facilities where the demand is located. It’s going to shorten transit time and make Tesla more flexible.

But that’s not going to happen until both Gigafactory 3 and 4 are at volume production.

In the meantime, I think we are going to still see those end-of-quarter rushes.