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Tesla on Tuesday said it delivered 386,810 electric vehicles over the first three months of 2024, falling wildly short of Wall Street’s expectations.
Last week, after a first quarter that one analyst called a “nightmare,” many analysts lowered their estimates. But the sales figures Tesla reported Tuesday fell far below even the revised estimates.
Wall Street had estimated deliveries of 457,000 EVs for the first quarter, according to a consensus tracked by FactSet. Deutsche Bank’s Emmanuel Rosner — who rates Tesla stock as a “buy” — trimmed his delivery forecast last week from 427,000 units to 414,000 units and cut full-year expectations from 2.06 million units to 1.9 million units. Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas lowered his delivery estimate from 469,000 units to 425,000 units. Jonas last month raised the possibility that Tesla could lose money this year.
Tesla stock dropped almost 6% in Tuesday morning trading after the company announced its poor first-quarter deliveries. Shares have fallen more than 33% so far this year, making Tesla the worst performer in the S&P 500. The company is also no longer one of the top 10 U.S. companies by market capitalization, trailing behind Visa, JPMorgan Chase, and weight-loss drug maker Novo Nordisk.
Austin, Texas-based Tesla said it sold 369,784 Model 3 compact cars and Model Y SUVs between January and March, and 17,027 other EVs. Although the automaker does not provide a breakout for those deliveries, they include the Model X crossover SUV, Model S sedan, and the Cybertruck, an electric pickup released by Tesla last November.
Tesla’s sales for the quarter fell more than 8% compared to a year earlier.
CEO Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company produced fewer vehicles in the quarter than it did during the first three months of 2023, largely due to factory revamps and disruptions abroad. Tesla assembled 433,371 EVs last quarter, down from 440,808 in 2023.
In China, where Tesla is facing off against strong local rivals like BYD and newcomers like Xiaomi, Tesla has started telling workers to lower Model Y and Model 3 production. Production has also been slowed because of an update to the Model 3 production line at Tesla’s flagship factory in Fremont, California. And an arson attack near Tesla’s Giga Berlin-Brandenburg in Germany shut down the facility for almost a week, costing the company about $1 billion. That shutdown came just weeks after the German facility reopened after a brief closure due to ongoing Houthi militia attacks on suppliers using the Red Sea to transport goods.
The poor performance comes in spite of a series of measures Musk has announced to drum up sales.
Tesla has committed to updating its driver assistance technology, Full Self-Driving, every two weeks in an effort to boost its popularity. The $12,000 software, which Musk has said would be a moneymaker, hasn’t been widely adopted by consumers. Tesla has also given all U.S. Tesla owners capable of installing the system a free one-month.
There are many reasons Tesla might be struggling to sell its cars — slowed interest from consumers, EV charging anxiety, and more. Deutsche Bank analysts said in a note to investors Tuesday that the difference between the number of EVs built and the number of cars sold “confirms that beyond the known production bottleneck, there may also be a serious demand issue.”
However, some investors are arguing that Musk and the company’s board of directors are to blame.
“It’s time for shareholders to assess the blame where due. The [T]esla BOD should be replaced immediately with independent directors as required by law,” Tesla investor Ross Gerber wrote Tuesday on X, Musk’s social media platform.
“Basically Tesla can’t sell its cars due to Elon’s behavior,” he added in a follow-up post. “Only one person [is] responsible for this.”
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, a longtime Tesla bull, last week called the first quarter a “nightmare” for Tesla, writing in a note to investors that the “Tesla narrative is as negative as we have seen in the last few years with Musk/Tesla getting attacked by the bears from all directions.”
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