Tesla misses Q4 delivery mark, but orders are up
Tesla Motors delivered 22,200 vehicles in the last quarter of 2016, leaving the electric automaker roughly 3,000 cars short of its projected yearend goal.
Consumers took possession of 76,230 Model S luxury sedans and gull-winged Model X luxury crossovers — the only two models it currently produces — last year, shy of the 79,000 Tesla targeted at the end of the third quarter.
Initially, Tesla had hoped to deliver between 80,000 and 90,000 vehicles in 2016 but ran into production glitches with its new Model X SUV, which has complex falcon-style rear doors that open upward.
Last fall, production slowed again. This time it blamed “shortterm challenges starting at the end of October and lasting through early December” due to the addition of new hardware for its Autopilot partial self-driving system, which pushed more vehicle production toward the end of the year than had been planned, company officials said in a statement.
Tesla (TSLA) shares closed up 1.5% Tuesday at $216.99 but then dropped 2% in after-hours trading.
The Palo Alto, Calif-based company actually hit its target when one considers the number of vehicles it produced. Tesla built 24,882 vehicles in the fourth quarter, resulting in total 2016 production of 83,922 vehicles, an increase of 64% from 2015.
Tesla said that nearly 3,000 cars that were out for delivery in the fourth quarter didn’t make it into the hands of customers either due to transportation snags or a buyer’s inability to take delivery. Nearly 7,000 cars started their journey to buyers in the quarter and will be counted as sales in the current quarter.
In the last three months of 2016, Tesla’s net orders for Model S and X were 52% higher than the year before, officials said.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has vowed to take Tesla from being a builder of luxury, six-figure cars packed with technology to a more mass-market electric vehicle manufacturer, thanks to the forthcoming Model 3 sedan. Tesla continues to add technology into its vehicles.
Starting at around $35,000, the Model 3 has piqued the interest of many buyers. Nearly 400,000 people have plunked down $1,000 deposits. On New Year’s Eve, Musk activated a new level of self-driving features for 1,000 owners.
Musk has a busy 2017 ahead. Not only is he juggling a $1 billion Gigafactory build-out in Nevada, but he’s also busy folding recently purchased SolarCity into the Tesla portfolio, in addition to running rocket company SpaceX.