Tesla Misses Q2 Delivery Target, But The Company's Doing Better Than You Think

Quinten Plummer, Tech Times 06 July 2016, 07:07 am

Tesla Motors on Sunday announced that it fell short of its target for deliveries during its second quarter, but the electric vehicle manufacturer has an answer for that shortcoming.

Tesla produced 18,345 electric vehicles during the second quarter and delivered 14,370 of them, cranking out about 2,000 cars each week on average. That output of electric vehicles was about a 20 percent increase from the previous quarter, though the company fell short of its production target of manufacturing 20,000 vehicles over the three-month period.

"Due to the steep production ramp, almost half of the quarter's production occurred in the final four weeks," the company said in a statement.

With production ramping up late in that quarter, Tesla closed out the period with 5,150 vehicles, which had already been claimed by customers, still on trucks and delayed for delivery in early Q3. In the company's first quarter, it left 2,615 vehicles on trucks, and those deliveries spilled into the second quarter.

Despite having missed several targets related to vehicle production and delivery, Tesla is projecting even higher numbers for the second half of the year. The company anticipates stepping up weekly production from 2,000 vehicles to 2,200, thanks to "continued productivity improvements."

In spite of having produced less than 30,000 vehicles during the first half of the year, Tesla is forecasting an output of 50,000 electric automobiles in the second half. The second half total is roughly the car company's output for the whole of last year.

"Current order rate trends and backlog support production at those levels," said Tesla.

While Tesla continues to fall short of its target, founder and CEO Elon Musk has said in the past that the company pushes itself by setting lofty goals.

It's also important to note that these production and delivery shortfalls are just a couple of measures of the company's financial state. Tesla's real trouble right now might be incoming scrutiny from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is now putting the automaker's autopilot feature under the microscope.

At the beginning of this month, Tesla reported the autopilot feature in its Model S car was at the center of a fatal automobile crash for the first time. The driver car, identified as Joshua Brown, perished after his Model S, guided by the car's autonomous driving system, crashed into a tractor trailer in Florida.