Tesla Reports Strong Production, Delivery Growth In Q3

Electric car manufacturer Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) has had a difficult year, rife with production problems for its flagship vehicles and self-inflicted scandals from founder and CEO Elon Musk. However, the company did report positive third-quarter production in a Tuesday SEC filing.

Production and delivery numbers for Tesla’s third quarter were up in all relevant categories, according to the filing. The manufacturer produced more than 80,000 total vehicles between its Model 3, Model S and Model S variants, which was a 50 percent rise from the previous quarter. More than 53,000 of those were Model 3s, which were central to reports of Tesla’s production problems earlier this year.

The company also reported 83,500 deliveries for the quarter, which is more than 80 percent of how many cars Tesla delivered in all of 2017. The bulk were Model 3 deliveries, as the variant accounted for more than 55,000 of Tesla’s total deliveries.

Tesla deliveries have reportedly taken up to a few months for some early adopters, but the company’s newest report indicates the process has been streamlined to some degree. Musk admitted in September that delivery was the main problem now, not production. Over the weekend, he blamed some of the problems on high volume.

Tesla’s primary struggle is attaining profitability after years of burning through money to get its manufacturing operation off the ground. In an email sent over the weekend, Musk told Tesla employees that the company was closer than ever to being profitable. Earlier this year, he said the company might turn a profit in the third quarter.

In the same email, Musk told his employees to focus and ignore the myriad distractions that have surrounded the company throughout 2018. Musk was responsible for some of those distractions, as it was one of his tweets that triggered a Securities and Exchange Commission probe that came to its conclusion last week.

Musk’s claim that the company would go private at $420 per share resulted in a hefty fine from the SEC. Per the terms of their settlement, Musk and his company will separately pay $20 million to the federal agency.

Shares of Tesla were down more than 1 percent in early afternoon trading Tuesday.