Tesla Deliveries Are Down 31% From Last Quarter -- But Up 110% From Last Year (forbes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Forbes: Tesla's stock dropped 8% Thursday on the news that Q1 deliveries fell 31% from the previous quarter. However, being a seasonal business, car companies usually compare their results against the same quarter from the previous year. On that basis, virtually all of the major car companies have said Q1 sales will be flat to 7% lower than last year. In contrast, Tesla's deliveries are up 110% from last year. From the one year perspective, Tesla is the only car company that is growing...

Yesterday's headlines which focused on the 31% decline are factually correct but misleading. Moreover, Tesla said that delays in deliveries to Europe and China caused "a large number of vehicle deliveries to shift to the second quarter. At the end of the first quarter, approximately 10,600 vehicles were in transit to customers globally..." Had Tesla managed the increased deliveries in Europe and China a little better, they might have come close to Wall Street's expectations.
On Friday, Tesla's stock bounced up 2.68%.

Comments

Re:Tesla is a fraud

[Gravis Zero]

Tesla is a fraud. It is Theranos...

How so? Are they not electric cars? Do they not function as cars?

but they make explosive electric cars.

Electric cars do not explode, Tesla or otherwise. In the event a damaged battery cell, a cascade reaction can occur in which the battery slowly burns the car but never explode. However, ICE cars have been known to explode because they are powered by a combustible fuel source and a collision can cause the gasoline to leak. When the leaking gasoline meets a small ignition source the vehicle is soon engulfed in a fireball.

Re:They're largely filling preexisting orders

[sphealey]

- - - - - Not saying there isn't demand - there very well could be. But we'll never know exactly how much real demand there is because the law manipulates market forces to make the tail wag the dog (forces automakers to lower the price until a certain level of demand is attained). - - - -

Thoughtful and informative post. There are two factors that might be added to the list:

* Having driven an electric car (Volt) for six months now IMHO electrics are superior to ICE for 80% of USian use cases (and to me more enjoyable, but that's a matter of preference)
* The US alone spends about a a half-trillion dollars of taxpayer money per year subsidizing the oil industry with everything from drilling credits to Superfund cleanups to military garrisoning of the major oil producing regions of the world, so the market for ICE vehicles is not exactly undistorted.