Tesla began its first-quarter 2019 earnings report by hyping up how many Model 3s it’s still selling, but after that, things got a little dicier.
The company did share that it doesn’t build the Model 3 to order and instead manufactures them in batches depending on trim level and region. Since the first quarter of 2019 was the first time the automaker started selling vehicles overseas, it faced “challenges in ramping up [its] logistics channels and increasing the capacity of [its] international delivery operations.
This is a slightly more detailed reason why it shipped fewer cars last quarter than Q4 2018.
When it gets into the money side of things Tesla’s net loss was $702 million USD (roughly, 947 million CAD). To make matters worse, the company doesn’t expect to make another profit until the third quarter of the year — Tesla’s last profitable quarters were in the latter half of 2018.
The company is still maintaining its overall goal to deliver 360,000 to 400,000 vehicles throughout 2019, which would be a 45 to 65 percent increase over last year. On a hopeful note, the investors’ relations document states that if Tesla gets its Shanghai Gigafactory up and running at volume by the end of the year, it could produce (not deliver) 500,000 cars.
In the next quarter, specifically, it’s hoping to deliver 90,000 to 100,000 vehicles.
One interesting note from the ‘Capacity expansion’ section of the report mentions that Tesla has gotten better at manufacturing and the Shanghai factory will allow it to manufacture the Model 3 for much cheaper.
It says “We have spent years developing this platform, and Gigafactory Shanghai and our planned Model Y production line will be the first to reap the benefits of this investment. Learning from our experience, we can now build a second-generation Model 3 line in China that we expect will be at least 50% cheaper per unit of capacity than our Model 3-related lines in Fremont and at Gigafactory 1.”
Finally, the company says it thinks the Model Y will “have higher sales than Model S, Model X and Model 3 combined” once it comes out.
Source: Tesla
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
