Tesla CEO Elon Musk hinted during a keynote interview with the Financial Times (FT) that his electric auto manufacturing company may stop taking orders beyond a certain period of time (video below). Because, on certain vehicles and trim levels, the vehicle delivery timeline is almost 1 year now.
The reason behind this delivery timeline stretch is due to the “ridiculous demand (in Musk’s words)” that Tesla is facing right now. If we go through Tesla’s online car configurator, we can see that Tesla Model Y and Model X have the longest delivery waiting periods stamped for new orders.
“We’re actually probably going to limit or just stop taking orders for anything beyond a certain period of time because some of the timing is like a year away,” Musk said during the online interview. “So now, demand is exceeding production to a ridiculous degree,” he added.
The current production capacity of Tesla is not able to meet the insane demand for its cars, especially the Model Y despite its being produced at 4 Gigafactories around the world (Fremont, Shanghai, Berlin, and Texas).
In the United States, Model Y Long Range estimated delivery timelines provided by Tesla are between Nov 2022 – Feb 2023. The production of this variant of the Model Y most probably has not yet started at Giga Texas. Tesla factory in Austin, TX opened last month but the vehicles given to employees suggest that a new Model Y Standard Range AWD variant is getting made at this location which has not yet been launched for the public.
Therefore, the only location in the US where the Model Y Long Range is being produced is Tesla’s oldest Fremont factory in California.
On the other hand, the Tesla Model X is also made at the Fremont factory but this vehicle is not limited by extreme demand, it’s because of its production complexity, especially the falcon-wing doors, and other premium features like auto-opening doors, etc.
Our Issue is not demand, It is production.
Elon Musk via FT
Tesla produced 305,407 cars in the first quarter of 2022, the 7th time in a row that Tesla scaled up its production capacity. Simultaneously, deliveries also grew in each of the last 7 quarters exponentially.
In Q1 2022, Tesla (TSLA) produced more than 101K cars a month or ~25,450 cars per week across all of its factories. Since Giga Berlin and Giga Texas just started production during Q1 2022, the production numbers in the coming Q2 2022 should be even better.
Covid-related closures at Giga Shanghai also affected Tesla production numbers in the first quarter and this factory is expected to hit full production this Q to add a positive impact to overall production and delivery numbers.
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