Tesla (TSLA) announced that it delivered a record 343,000 electric cars during the third quarter.
The automaker also destroyed its previous production record and confirmed a change in its end-of-quarter delivery push.
Today, Tesla released its delivery and production numbers for the third quarter of 2022.
The company confirmed that it beat both its delivery and production records by significant margins with more than 343,000 vehicles delivered and over 365,000 vehicles produced over the last 3 months.
Tesla confirmed that it produced almost 346,000 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles and delivered roughly 325,000 of them.
As for the flagship and more expensive Model S and Model X, Tesla delivered 18,672 units on a production a few units short of 20,000.
This means that Tesla has over 20,000 new vehicles in inventory at the end of the quarter, which is high for the automaker. However, all of those vehicles are already sold and are in transit.
Tesla confirmed that it couldn’t secure transport at reasonable prices during its end-of-quarter delivery rush and it resulted in more vehicles in transit:
Historically, our delivery volumes have skewed towards the end of each quarter due to regional batch building of cars. As our production volumes continue to grow, it is becoming increasingly challenging to secure vehicle transportation capacity and at a reasonable cost during these peak logistics weeks. In Q3, we began transitioning to a more even regional mix of vehicle builds each week, which led to an increase in cars in transit at the end of the quarter. These cars have been ordered and will be delivered to customers upon arrival at their destination.
Tesla has previously communicated to employees that it wants to prioritize costs over delivery numbers during its end of quarter pushes.
The automaker still managed to achieve a delivery record – beating its last by over 30,000 units.
However, these vehicles in transit resulted in a miss on expectations as most of them were between 350,000 and 370,000 vehicles this quarter. With the vehicles in transit, Tesla would have hit the higher end of expectations.
Electrek recently reported that Tesla focused on fleet deliveries at the end of the quarter.
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