According to this piece in Barron’s, Tesla’s April sales are pathetic. Down 80% or more, as people in China wait for the Auto Show. Or at least that’s one possible explanation, although other EV makers there are down significantly less.
Gonna be hard to make up the difference, and since China accounts for such a big part of sales, might impact the entire quarter’s output. Again.
Tesla Stock Has A China Problem
[Tesla]’s start to April in [China] has been weak and that isn’t good news for weary Tesla investors.
In March, the electric vehicle giant sold about 62,000 vehicles in China. Sales in the first week of the new month, however, amounted to just 1,880 units, down 89% week over week and down 86% month over month, according to industry data tracked by Citi analyst [Jeff Chung].
Tesla’s “April sales may drop 60% month over month,” added the analyst in a Tuesday evening report.
There are a few reasons for the weak number. The Beijing Auto Show is happening in late April so buyers could be waiting. In addition, buyers are also hoping for a new EV subsidy, potentially launched this quarter. The final week of March, of course, was the final week of a quarter when many car companies put extra emphasis on ramping sales to hit numbers.
Still, the early April decline will stir investor anxiety. Tesla also underperformed other auto makers. For the first week of April, overall Chinese sales of battery-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids dropped 17% month over month.
That isn’t the start to the new quarter investors were hoping for.
Tesla Cuts Prices Again. It’s a Sign of Weakening Demand.
[T esla] cut prices for its [Model Y], S, and X vehicles. Investors aren’t going to like that. Cuts will stoke more fears about demand, [Tesla]’s [product lineup], and its pricing strategy.
Tesla’s U.S. website Saturday showed base versions of the Model Y, S, and X starting at about $43,000, $73,000, and $78,000 respectively. All trims appeared to have been reduced by $2,000. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Barron’s.
Cuts are a sign of weakening demand—and generating more demand has been a struggle for the electric-vehicle giant lately
Luckily Tesla doesn’t have to advertise because they can sell everything they make
PS: This is 4 days after Musk said they were ending discounts and making the delivery process “more efficient”, in response to a question about the layoffs.
OK I’m combining two stories here, but one says Tesla has recalled 3,878 of its pickups due to events of unintended acceleration. The second says Tesla has recalled “every one” of its trucks for that reason. So it seems reasonable to conclude they’ve moved under 4,000 of them. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but at least it’s a number.
The second story, on the Verge, shows the recall in action. Seems the rubber pad on the pedal can slip off and become jammed down causing 100% acceleration - so Tesla is drilling a hole in the pedal and the pad and inserting a rivet. Not exactly a software fix, but simple enough, one might think.
It’s very simple. The Tesla technician comes to your driveway, slides a plastic guide over the pedal, the guide has a hole in it for the drill, they drill the hole through the pedal and plastic, then they remove the guide and use a rivet insertion tool to affix the rivet that holds everything in place. This (or likely some other, better fix) will happen in the factory for all future vehicles.
To me, the major piece of information here is that the Cybertruck production ramp has been exceedingly slow if they’ve only sold 4000 of them so far. Of course, it is prudent to ramp slowly to avoid too many of these types of recalls. This one is very inexpensive, but sometimes initial issue recalls can be quite expensive (there was one at Chrysler (I think) a few years ago that cost them nearly $2000 per vehicle!)
