Tesla’s quarterly car deliveries fell year-on-year for the first time since 2020, raising concerns about the company’s global market share as international competition intensifies.
Elon Musk’s electric car maker announced on Tuesday that it had delivered 386,810 vehicles worldwide in the first three months of 2024. press release — a drop of more than 9% from the 422,875 vehicle sales in the first quarter of last year. The figure was well below Wall Street’s estimate of 457,000.
The Austin, Texas-based company produced more than 433,000 vehicles for delivery in the first quarter, meaning about 12% of its inventory remained unsold.
Tesla claims the shortage is due to the diversion of shipping from the Red Sea, with commercial ships diverting from the Suez Canal to avoid attacks by Houthi rebels and taking a much longer and more expensive detour around the Cape of Good Hope. I am taking an expensive route. Support for Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war.
Tesla said the Gigafactory Berlin arson incident was another setback, as was construction of a production ramp at its Fremont, California, factory.
According to the newspaper, Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner suggested that the gap between production and delivery “beyond known production bottlenecks, there may also be serious demand issues.” The company wrote in its memo to investors. Wall Street Journal.
The majority of Tesla’s sales come from 369,783 Model 3s and Model Ys, the Elon Musk-owned company said.
Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Despite the shortfall, this result was enough for Tesla to take back the world’s top EV sales position from BYD.
Tesla lost the title to BYD late last year, when the Chinese EV rival was touted to offer mass-produced models far cheaper than Tesla’s price for China’s cheapest Model 3 sedan. .
The company, which stands for “Build Your Dreams,” sold 300,114 fully electric vehicles globally in the first three months of this year, an increase of 13% compared to the same period in 2023.
Although BYD’s vehicles are not to be found on U.S. roads, its success adds to the signs that China is accelerating in the race for global domination of the auto industry.
In 2008, Berkshire Hathaway invested about $230 million to acquire a nearly 10% stake in BYD, which has since soared about 35 times to about $8 billion. According to Bloomberg.
In recent years, Chinese automakers have also poached top talent from other luxury car companies, including Ferrari’s head of exterior design and Mercedes-Benz’s top designer, who joined the company in 2016 as head of design. This includes Wolfgang Egger. Even Audi and Alfa Romeo.
Meanwhile, Japanese automaker Nissan has also announced plans for 30 new cars, 16 of which will be fully electric.
The company announced last week that seven of its upcoming new models would be exclusive to the U.S. and Canada, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many of them would be fully electric.
Nissan also hinted in a press release that “e-POWER and plug-in hybrid models” that use a combination of electricity and fuel will be introduced in the Americas.
Tesla is scheduled to report its full financial report for the first quarter of 2024 on April 23rd.
