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Tesla Model 3 Outselling Small, Midsize Luxury Cars In US (forbes.com)

WindBourne shares a report from Forbes: In the second quarter of 2018, Tesla produced just over 53,000 vehicles, doubling its output compared to the same quarter last year. For the first time, Model 3 production (28,578) exceeded combined Model S and X production (24,761) with deliveries to customers totaling 40,740 for the quarter. The ramp up in Model 3 production is enabling it to outsell small and midsize luxury car sales in the U.S., according to some number crunching by CleanTechnica's Zachary Shahan.

His analysis claims that the Model 3 is crushing its "competitors" in that segment with total estimated sales for July amounting to 16,000 vehicles. The closest individual model to Tesla's mass-market endeavor is the Mercedes C-Class and even then, its July sales are estimated at just 6,029 units. The Model 3 is still untouchable when sales figures from multiple vehicles produced by the same company are added together. For example, the analysis expects sales of the BMW 2, 3, 4 and 5 Series to hit 12,811 at the end of July in total while customers will get their hands on 11,835 Mercedes C, CLA, CLS and E-Class models. That all means that Tesla would have a 23% share of the small and midsize luxury car market in July, ahead of BMW's 17% and Mercedes' 17%.

9 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. That's what counts by AlanObject · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I suppose we can expect more muskisdelusionalandoutofcash postings.

    In the last Tesla thread I pointed out that, as an stockholder, what I am looking for is NOT Elon Musk's cute personality or science fantasy. Nor do I care to whig out at every little story of production problems. What I am looking for is:

    Technological leadership.

    Market presence.

    Production leadership.

    Most of all: backorders and strong forecast. None of the rest matters unless you have someone willing to buy it. Tesla has that in spades.

    So Tesla is delivering. Skepticism is healthy but not to the extent that the Tesla naysayers on /. take it.

    1. Re:That's what counts by 110010001000 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Well then as a stockholder you are looking at the wrong thing then. You can have all those things and still go out of business. The fact is that Tesla is $10 billion in debt and has a negative 90 P/E ratio. In addition, Tesla will need to go back to the capital markets to get more money. This means more convertible bonds, which means YOUR stock will be diluted further. You shouldn't be investing in individual stocks unless you really know what you are doing. Even then the risk is very high, because companies could be lying about their numbers (e.g. Enron). None of this should be a surprise. Tesla is down 20% in the last 12 months while the overall (bull) market has been up 12%.

  2. Now what, shorts? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Time to get your media buddies to make up some #metoo fake news about Elon before your positions are called.

    Or maybe just flee to Thailand before the inevitable happens.

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  3. Interesting information by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I suppose we can expect more muskisdelusionalandoutofcash postings.

    In the last Tesla thread I pointed out that, as an stockholder, what I am looking for is NOT Elon Musk's cute personality or science fantasy. Nor do I care to whig out at every little story of production problems. What I am looking for is:

    Technological leadership.

    Market presence.

    Production leadership.

    Most of all: backorders and strong forecast. None of the rest matters unless you have someone willing to buy it. Tesla has that in spades.

    So Tesla is delivering. Skepticism is healthy but not to the extent that the Tesla naysayers on /. take it.

    There are a lot of people sending out fake news about Tesla nowadays, but there's an interesting bit of information.

    Normally, in the two weeks ahead of a financial report the stock will mirror the report outcome. If the report is good, the stock will rise a little just before the announcement. If the report is bad, the stock will drop a little.

    Tesla will be making their Q2 announcement on Wednesday (after the market closes), and it's dropped by 10% in that time.

    In any other stock that would indicate bad news, but for Tesla? It could indicate a last-ditch effort for the bears to drive the stock down before a "good news" report. People are changing Tesla from "hold" to "sell", and saying that they're certain Tesla will need another round of financing.

    (Musk claims that they will not need another round, and that Tesla will be profitable in Q3 and Q4 of this year.)

    Tesla short interest is 34m shares right now, and with 170m shares outstanding, that's about 20% of Tesla is being shorted right now. 25% is held by Musk, so that's about 1/4 of public shares are held short.

    There are three key periods coming up for Tesla: the Q2 report (Wednesday), and Q3 and Q4 of this year.

    Over 50% of Tesla shares are held by 5 entities: Musk, Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, and so on. If the institutions dig their heels into the sand and refuse to sell, and if the other public shareholders also refuse to sell, there will be a short run and the stock price will skyrocket. There's nowhere that the short sellers can go to settle.

    If no one is selling the stock, or there are many buyers, including panic buyers, caused by other short sellers attempting to close out their positions as they lose more and more money, you may be in a position to incur serious losses.

    The institutions know this. Many of the public shareholders know this.

    If the stock jumps up and Tesla seems reasonably solvent, it's estimated the short sellers will be out several tens of billions of dollars.

    Expect a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth...

    (I own shares in Tesla and want to see them succeed.)

  4. Re:Strange by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Lets see.
    Here is a map of just Tesla Super Chargers. I see load in Texas.
    Here is a map of all commercial electric chargers Keep in mind with EVs, most of your electricity comes from your own home since few trips are more than 100 miles.
    Here is a graph of Tesla registrations by state, about a year ago. Since over 5% are in Texas, that would mean at least 20K cars are Tesla just in Texas.

    The real issue is that you are noticing what you want to see.

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  5. Re:Trucks? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Every day Ford sells an average of 2,452 F-Series trucks...

    And in 1907 more people bought horse carriages than all automobiles combined, and the city streets were full of manure rather than the air being full of pollution. Change happens.

  6. Re:Regular orders or filling back orders? by Zobeid · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think it's funny how I've already seen attempts to spin this negative for Tesla no matter what the sales numbers are. Backlog of orders isn't shrinking? Poor Tesla, they just can't mass-produce them like a real car company, they'll never catch up. Backlog of orders shrinks? Poor Tesla, they're stuck building a product that there just isn't that much demand for after all. Everything is grist for the mill of skeptics.

  7. Amazon is different by SethJohnson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Besides, Amazon didn't turn a profit until very recently.

    I share your enthusiasm and hope for Tesla to be a successful American auto maker.

    Please don't conflate Tesla with Amazon, however. Jeff Bezo could have flipped the switch on profitability 10 years ago. He dragged the shareholders through this long process while building out infrastructure with all revenue brought in. Kind of like in the movie, "There will be blood" where the guy is buying up all the land around the town and nobody knows why, then he starts pumping oil out of all that property and nobody can negotiate a sale of property on the newly-realized value. In the case of Amazon, Bezos wanted to absolutely pave an immense footprint before being held to profitability on a quarterly basis by the shareholders. Now he's got an fairly diversified company that dominates in many sectors (public cloud, online retail, digital media readers, echo).

  8. Re:Regular orders or filling back orders? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Unfortunately it's as bad from both sides. You have the people who want Tesla to fail for whatever reason, and the fanboys who can't accept that any other EV might not be a steaming pile of shit.

    Tesla makes some good cars. They have also had a lot of quality issues, and their prices are pretty high. Good luck to them, we need more EVs. At the same time, companies like Hyundai and Nissan/Renault have made some good cars too, starting from the affordable end of the market instead, and are now releasing cars with 300 mile range and features like autopilot. Hooray for them too.

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