Tesla shipped 14,370 cars in the second quarter of the year, missing its sales target from May by 15 percent. The company produced 18,345 cars in the three-month period, again missing its own target, which was for 20,000 cars. Still, the output was 20 percent higher than in the first quarter of the year.
Missed targets, however, do not necessarily mean slacking demand. In fact, Tesla said that it ramped-up production most intensively in June, when half of the quarterly total was assembled. This means, USA Today notes, that around 5,000 of the pre-ordered Tesla Model S's and Model X's will be delivered in the third quarter.
For the second half of the year, Tesla plans to churn out 50,000 vehicles - approximately equal to its 2015 total. For the full year, it is keeping its guidance for 80,000 to 90,000 cars.
Source: Bloomberg
It's worth noting that the carmaker missed its production target for the first quarter of the year as well. It had planned to ship 16,000 cars but it only shipped 14,820. The company then explained the missed target with shortages of component parts.
Tesla recently made headlines with its offer to acquire SolarCity, one of the biggest solar energy players in North America. The all-stock proposal offers a premium of 21%-30% to SolarCity's stock, which has definitely seen better days. Like its peers, SolarCity has been impacted by wavering demand for clean energy thanks to the oil price rout. A tie-up with Tesla would, according to the carmaker's release, result in a fully integrated end-to-end clean energy provider.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. More