Tesla sales lose power in 1st qtr.
Tesla posted its first year-over-year drop in quarterly car deliveries since 2020, stoking concerns about the company’s global market share as international competition has revved up.
Elon Musk’s electric-car maker Tuesday said it delivered 386,810 vehicles globally in the first three months of 2024, according to a press release, down more than 9% from the 422,875 vehicle sales in the first quarter of last year.
The number came in well below Wall Street’s expectations of 457,000 deliveries.
The Austin, Texas, company had produced more than 433,000 vehicles intended to be delivered during the first quarter, meaning roughly 12% of its inventory went unsold.
Tesla blamed the shortfall on shipping diversions from the Red Sea, which has seen commercial vessels taking much longer and costlier routes away from the Suez Canal and around the Cape of Good Hope to dodge attacks from Houthi rebels.
The Houthis have been attacking ships in a show of support for Palestinians amid the Israel-Hamas war.
An arson attack at Gigafactory Berlin proved to be another setback, Tesla said, as well as construction of its production ramp at its Fremont, Calif., factory.
The gap between production and deliveries suggests “that beyond the known production bottleneck, there may also be a serious demand issue,” Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner wrote in a note to investors, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The lion’s share of Tesla’s sales came from the 369,783 Model 3s and Model Ys, the firm said.
Representatives for Tesla did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Despite the shortfall, the results were enough for Tesla to reclaim the title as the world’s top EV seller from BYD.
Tesla lost the title to BYD late last year at a time when the Chinese-made EV rival was touted for offering higher-volume models that cost much less than what Tesla charges for its cheapest Model 3 sedan in China.
BYD, short for Build Your Dreams, sold 300,114 allelectric vehicles globally in the first three months of the year, up 13% from the same period in 2023.