Mike Blake/Reuters
- Tesla has “a shot at a record quarter for vehicle deliveries,” Elon Musk told staff in a leaked email on Sunday, seen by Bloomberg.
- The email, titled “All hands on deck!,” urged employees to sell as many vehicles as possible by the end of the electric vehicle company’s third quarter.
- Tesla’s current deliveries record is 112,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2019. The pandemic pushed down sales, and therefore deliveries to customers, in the first half of 2020.
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Tesla may beat its previous record for quarterly vehicle deliveries to customers if employees “rally hard” before September 30, CEO Elon Musk told staff in an internal email seen by Bloomberg.
He urged employees to beat the previous record in an email titled “All hands on deck!” sent on Sunday, ahead of Tesla’s annual meeting of stockholders on Tuesday, September 22.
Musk described vehicle deliveries as “absolute top priority,” and said it was vital to keep factory output “as high as possible” in the days leading up to September 30, when the company’s third quarter ends.
“This is the most number of vehicles per day that we’ve ever had to deliver,” he added.
Delivery numbers are important to Tesla because, unlike most other vehicle manufacturers, it owns its entire distribution system. This means that revenues aren’t reported until the company delivers vehicles to buyers. Tesla therefore tries to deliver as many vehicles as possible before the end of each quarter.
Tesla recorded 112,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2019, its record so far. In total, the company delivered around 367,500 vehicles in 2019, 50% more than in 2018.
But consumers cut back spending on cars during the pandemic, and Tesla delivered around 179,050 vehicles in the first half of 2020 – a 15% drop from the second half of 2019. It produced fewer cars between April and June than the previous quarter because factories shut down during the pandemic, but recorded slightly more deliveries.
For Tesla to beat its record from the fourth quarter of 2019, it needs to increase its vehicle deliveries by more than 20,000 from the 90,650 reported last quarter.
Musk had previously sent similar emails to staff nearing the end of a quarter.