Tesla delivers best ever 1st quarter electric car sales, despite Covid-19
Tesla stock soared 17% in after hours trading on Friday morning (Australia time) following the release of recorder first quarter deliveries for Q1 2020 on Thursday night (US time).
Tesla said more than 88,000 electric vehicles in total were delivered in the first quarter, 76,200 of which were Model 3 sedans and Model Y crossovers, with the remaining 12,200 made up by Tesla’s premium Model S sedan and Model X SUV.
Almost 103,000 units were produced, made up by 87,282 Model 3s and Model Ys, which the EV maker had commenced producing in January and started delivering in mid-March.
![](https://thedriven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/screenshot-ir.tesla_.com-2020.04.03-10_36_24.jpg)
Source: Tesla IR
“This is our best ever first quarter performance,” the company said in its press release.
Year-on-year its deliveries have been growing 40%, compared with a 35%
decrease for the overall US auto market, analyst for disruptive investment firm Ark Invest, Sam Korus noted on Twitter.
Tesla first quarter deliveries up 40% year over year.
US SAAR down 35% year over year. Per
@wintonARK, the fact that EVs were supply constrained means they should gain share in this downturn — Sam Korus (@skorusARK)
April 2, 2020
Delivery numbers – counted as a sale by Tesla – were just shy of Wall Street analyst expectations of 89,000 according to a survey by Factset,
Market Watch reports.
Although the delivery numbers seem off base for Tesla’s guidance that it would “comfortably exceed” 500,000 units delivered in 2020, the company has not withdrawn its guidance.
At the time, Tesla expected there would be some impact on first quarter production and sales, in part due to traditionally slow starts to the year for the auto industry at large, but also due to a forced temporary closure of its newly opened Shanghai Gigafactory 2 to assist in curtailing the spread of the novel Coronavirus in China.
Tesla CFO Zachary Kirkhorn said during the company’s 2019 fourth quarter call, “For Q1, please keep in mind that the industry is always impacted by seasonality.”
“We may be temporarily impacted by the coronavirus. At this point, we’re expecting a one to a one-and-a-half week delay in the ramp of Shanghai built Model 3 due to a government required factory shutdown.”
With the announcement of its
1 millionth vehicle made – a Model Y – on March 10, Credit Suisse analyst Dan Levy estimated production for the quarter would exceed 100,000.
“Elon Musk noted on March 10 that Tesla had produced its millionth vehicle. This likely implies that by 3/10 Tesla had produced ~85k units in the quarter, with a weekly production pace in Fremont of ~7,600-7,800 units/week,” Levy was quoted as saying by
CNBC.
In fact it beat that with 103,000 vehicles produced, despite announcing on March 19 that it would shutdown the Fremont factory.
But it seems Tesla may buck that trend.
Tesla’s early 2020 rally on the opening of the Shanghai factory and
positive news in the form of a Q4 2020 profit and Model Y ramp hit a high of $US968.99 in February.
Drops in share value due to the Covid-19 pandemic felt across industries saw Tesla’s stocks drop to a low of $US361.22 on March 18, and while some gains were subsequently made after the company announced it would continue with “touchless” deliveries as it shut down Fremont, some analysts remained cautious.
According to
The Street, Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas said that some investors doubted Tesla would achieve 80,000 deliveries, and although the EV maker has in fact met his own estimate of 88,000 he noted that Tesla’s typical end-of-quarter ramp up of deliveries would be disrupted.
CNBC notes that JMP Securities’ Joseph Osha, who revised his price target on Tuesday from $US1,060 to $US840 now predicts annual deliveries will be 433,000 for 2020 but also believes Tesla will rebound in 2021.
“Obviously, much has changed for TSLA recently, and with that in mind we revise our model to reflect lower production and delivery activity for 2020,” he was quoted as saying in a note by CNBC on Tuesday.
One of the most cautious investors, Loup Ventures’ Gene Munster, who revised delivery estimates to just 57,000, sees the current situation in a more positive light, expecting that despite the shutdown which now also affects its Fremont Gigafactory where the Model 3 and Model Y are made, Tesla will still keep ahead of the legacy car maker pack.
“We see anything above 57k (our bottom-up math) as a directional positive,” Munster was quoted as saying by CNBC.
“The Street is at 79.9k after adjusting for the impact of the shutdown. The most important benchmark will be Tesla’s sequential decline in deliveries vs. the broader auto industry, which we won’t have data on for another month. We believe, even with the shutdown, Tesla will continue to outpace the broader auto industry growth rate by 25-30%.”
https://thedriven.io/2020/04/03/tes...-quarter-electric-car-sales-despite-covid-19/
Tesla’s sales a ‘sigh of relief’ for bulls
Tesla
late Thursday reported first-quarter deliveries just a bit lower than consensus, which sent shares to double-digit gains in the extended session.
Tesla
TSLA, +5.62% shares traded as high as $515.49 Friday, poised to snap a two-day losing streak, a day after the Silicon Valley electric-car maker announced first-quarter deliveries, its proxy for sales, and production numbers.
The stock is up 77% so far this year, contrasting with losses around 14% for the S&P 500 index.
SPX, -1.51% Shares are down 47% from their all-time closing high of $917.42 on Feb. 19. It was the best performing stock in the Nasdaq 100 on Friday.
It was a “small victory in a dark environment,” analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush said in a note.
Investors feared how bad first quarter sales would be given the economic destruction brought about by the novel coronavirus and demand seeing “a screeching halt” worldwide, he said.
“It appears (Tesla’s) China production and demand are starting to rebound and should be a key growth driver over the coming quarters, although clear challenges remain in the months ahead as Tesla (and every other company) navigates this treacherous consumer landscape,” Ives said.
www.marketwatch.com/story/teslas-sales-a-sigh-of-relief-for-bulls-2020-04-03?mod=mw_quote_news
Australia electric and hybrid sales hold up, as overall car sales crash
https://thedriven.io/2020/04/03/aus...rid-sales-hold-up-as-overall-car-sales-crash/
Tesla's stock soars after deliveries data; Deutsche Bank now expects a Q1 profit
www.marketwatch.com/story/teslas-stock-soars-after-deliveries-data-deutsche-bank-now-expects-a-q1-profit-2020-04-03?mod=mw_quote_news
GM and Honda join forces to make two EVs using Ultium battery
https://thedriven.io/2020/04/03/gm-and-honda-join-forces-to-make-two-evs-using-ultium-battery/
Tesla ramps up first V3 supercharger installations for Europe
Tesla is ramping up installation of its V3 Superchargers, with several sites in European countries including France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands open or under construction, and a number of Supercharger units made at the Buffalo Gigafactory 2 currently aboard ships headed for Rotterdam.
Tesla’s V3 Superchargers will be a game-changer for European Tesla owners. First announced in March 2019, the level-up version of the electric car maker’s proprietary chargers will allow a maximum charge rate of 250kW, made possible by a new 1 megawatt cabinet that also does not split power when two vehicles are charging at once.
While the roll out of the first V3 Superchargers commenced in the US in 2019, and London received its first V3 Superchargers in late 2019 – as attested by
Fully Charged’s Robert Llewellyn – Europe is yet to have any permanent V3 installations.
Tesla CEO and co-founder Elon Musk
said in January that deployment of V3 Superchargers would ramp up in 2020, and several social media reports of installations now under way back this up, along with a ship’s manifest (as shared by Tesla ship tracker
@VedaPrime) stating 16 units made at Gigafactory 2 –
where V3 units are made – are due to arrive in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on April 6.
So what is known about the upcoming European V3 Supercharger sites?
Germany
First, we know that there are Superchargers already in operation in Hilden, situated in western Germany near Düsseldorf.
German media site TE Magazin reports that while these are V2 “popup chargers”, the site promises to be Europe’s largest electric vehicle fast charging sites by 2022, with 40 V3 stations planned along with 20 350kW from European EV network FastNed according to the lessor of the site.
France
Another site is planned for Saint-Laurent-sur-Manoire, near Périgueux in France’s south west. According to crowd-sourced Supercharger tracking site
supercharge.info, this site will have 8 Supercharger stalls.
The Netherlands
One of Europe’s biggest markets for electric vehicles, almost 30,000 Tesla Model 3s were sold in the Netherlands in 2019 according to
Cleantechnica, twice as many as in Europe’s leading EV market, Norway.
Accordingly, there are three sites in total earmarked for the Netherlands according to supercharge.info, including Apeldoorn, Rijwijk and Uden.In total, Netherlands has 62 V3 Supercharger stalls planned.
Twitter user Roberti di Gento shared these images of the Uden site with construction well underway in early February.
Norway
According to both supercharge.info and this report from Norwegian site Tek.no, the first V3 superchargers came online in the leading EV market of Norway in mid-March, with 12 stalls at Liertoppen, south-west of Oslo.
Italy
Not to be left out, Tesla has also begun construction of a V3 Supercharger site in Forlì, Italy. However, with Italy now one of the worst hit by the Coronavirus pandemic it is unclear whether construction has been halted. When finished, it will have 20 stalls according to supercharge.info.
Denmark
According to supercharge.info, 16 stalls are currently under construction in Ikast, central Denmark.
https://thedriven.io/2020/04/01/tesla-ramps-up-first-v3-supercharger-installations-for-europe/
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