Tesla delays deliveries of new Model S and Model X electric vehicles

Tesla buyers who ordered the new, recently refreshed Model S and Model X models are seeing their deliveries being pushed back as the automaker is experiencing delays in bringing the vehicles to production.

When Tesla unveiled the new refreshed Model S and Model X in January, CEO Elon Musk said that the first deliveries would happen within a few weeks.

However, Tesla didn’t deliver any refreshed Model S and Model X vehicles during the first quarter.

In an email Musk sent to Tesla employees in late February and obtained by Electrek, the CEO said that the automaker was “almost done” retooling the production lines, and it expected to reach full production in Q2:

Model S/X production lines are almost done with the retooling and will be aiming for max production next quarter. There is high demand, so we are soon going to need to go back to two shifts. Please recommend friends for recruiting.

That was six weeks ago, and there has yet to be a single reported new Model S or Model X delivery.

Tesla appears to have run into some issues in producing and/or getting the new Model S and Model X ready for deliveries.

Now, many Tesla buyers who placed orders early after the new Model S was launched are seeing their estimated delivery dates pushed back by a few months.

Most of them had March and April estimated delivery dates, but they have now been pushed to a May-July timeframe.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that Tesla won’t deliver any new Model S vehicles, but the production ramp-up has certainly been delayed.

For brand-new orders of the Model S Long Range or Plaid in the US, Tesla currently has a 10- to 14-week lead time. For the Model X, Tesla estimates a May-June timeframe for deliveries on new orders being placed now.

Electrek’s Take

It’s unclear what the problem is here. Tesla made extensive changes to the Model S and Model X both inside and out of the vehicles with the refresh.

Electrek‘s Seth Weintraub made a good point on last week’s Electrek podcast when he said that the delay for deliveries might actually be related to software.

Tesla needed to redesign the software and user interface for the new Model S and Model X due to the new horizontal center display, which needs a completely different UI than the Model 3/Y display, since they don’t need the whole left side for the information that goes into the instrument cluster.

Also, the instrument cluster itself needs a redesign since the screen format has changed. Finally, there’s the second-row screen that needs a whole new UI since it didn’t exist before.

We even saw a glimpse of the new Tesla v11 software in a Model S prototype last month.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is part of the delay, but it’s speculation for now.

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