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Tesla Vehicle Deliveries Hit Another Record In Q3, Beats Analysts' Estimates (reuters.com) 83

Posted by EditorDavid from the what-chip-shortage dept.
Tesla announced that it's delivered a new record number of electric cars in its third quarter, according to Reuters, "beating Wall Street estimates after Chief Executive Elon Musk asked staff to 'go super hardcore' to make a quarter-end delivery push."

Slashdot reader McGruber shared Reuters' report: Tesla has weathered the chip crisis better than rivals, with its overall deliveries surging 20% in the July to September period from its previous record in the second quarter, marking the sixth consecutive quarter-on-quarter gains... Tesla delivered 241,300 vehicles globally in the July to September quarter, up 73% from a year earlier. Analysts had expected the electric-car maker to deliver 229,242 vehicles, according to Refinitiv data.

General Motors, Honda and some of its bigger rivals posted declines in U.S. sales in the third quarter, hit by a prolonged chip shortage. GM's third-quarter U.S. sales fell nearly 33% to its lowest level in more than a decade.
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Tesla Vehicle Deliveries Hit Another Record In Q3, Beats Analysts' Estimates More

Tesla Vehicle Deliveries Hit Another Record In Q3, Beats Analysts' Estimates

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  • No Reduced Orders (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @01:14PM (#61856419) Homepage Journal

    Tesla had one huge advantage over other automakers in that they did not scale back orders for reduced demand during the initial pandemic lockdowns. They didn't waver from their expansion plans. That probably kept Tesla out of trouble for several months after we first heard of other auto manufacturers having problems.

    Of course, when it was time to order more, they had the same problem as everyone else. (And we all know how Tesla was able to switch to other parts and such to reduce the impact.)

    • Re:No Reduced Orders (Score:5, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @01:40PM (#61856491)

      Another advantage for Tesla is that its chips are newer and use smaller transistors, so Tesla's chips are made on different fab lines that have less backlog.

      • Re:No Reduced Orders (Score:4, Informative)

        by crow ( 16139 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @01:49PM (#61856529) Homepage Journal

        For some things, yes, but not for everything. There are some automotive chips that they're in the same boat as everyone else, like the airbag sensor chips.

        • The Model Y this year stopped including front passenger lumbar support. My guess is a micro-controller issue. When a car needs 2 but are in a short supply you can make twice as many cars by only including 1.

      • That is rubbish. The type of semiconductors needed to manage battery power will not use tiny transistors, You need kit that will handle hundreds of amps, and hundreds of volts. I imagine Tesla might have forward ordered enough stock to keep their production going. It is a kind of panic buying.

    • Also Tesla make a fraction of cars that other auto makers make.

    • Also they had in-house staff to re-write code for a variety of microcontrollers.

  • Tesla's Order Times and Relative Prices (Score:5, Informative)

    by McGruber ( 1417641 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @01:43PM (#61856513)

    I have been sort of shopping for a new car for about a year now - my current SUV is 17 years old and has 170,000 miles on it. It's overdue for replacement, but I don't really want to sink a lot of my savings into a brand-new gas car in the year 2021. I was considering buying a used gas car, but their prices have gone crazy - Carmax seems to be selling 2 year old cars for more than what brand new cars (same models, just 2 years newer) are selling for new. I really want to go electric, but I am not at all enamored by any of the vehicles in Tesla's line of cars - the Model 3 reminds me of the Chrysler Neon. So I find myself stuck in an analysis/paralysis loop and that's why I keep driving my current vehicle.

    Anyway, while car shopping, I was surprised to see that Tesla has 6+ month long backlogs for its S, X and Y models. Here's Tesla's estimated delivery times right now for Atlanta, as of today October 3:

    Model S: April-May Model 3: December Model X: May-June Model Y: April

    I was also surprised by how Tesla's prices aren't that much more than equivalent gas cars. I was just pricing hybrid Toyotas -- the plug-in hybrid RAV4 has a starting MSRP of $41,675. Toyota's website says it is extremely limited in my area and the website won't give me any information about its option packages. I assume that adding the options I would want will bring its price up to $45,000+. Meanwhile Tesla's website tells me the cash price for a dual-motor Model Y is $53,990

    • Re:Tesla's Order Times and Relative Prices (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cassini2 ( 956052 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @02:50PM (#61856675)

      The market seems to be at an inflection point. If you are in a state/country with vehicle subsidies, the decision to go electric is easy. Without subsidies, Tesla's prices are in the mid to upper end of the car market, which is affordable for a significant section of the market. For many, the obstacles to going electric are small. The environmental and performance advantages are clear. The issue now is about supply.

      The manufacturers need to step up and deliver products for people to purchase. It's Tesla's market to capture for the moment, and it sounds like they are capturing it as fast as they can.

      The need to do the switch to electric is also becoming obvious. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find areas of the country unaffected by extreme weather, and important agricultural areas are going into drought. I hope that the auto manufacturers accomplish the transition quickly.

      • The need to do the switch to electric is also becoming obvious.

        No, it's not.

        How is buying a BEV lowering one's CO2 emissions over buying a flexible fuel vehicle?
        (For those unfamiliar with the term "flexible fuel vehicle", or FFV, this is a class of vehicle designed to run on any mix of ethanol to gasoline from 0% to 85%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        The claim is that with a BEV the CO2 emissions from the vehicle gets lower as the grid switches to more low CO2 emitting electricity sources. Is that happening in the USA? As it is now the new capacity for wind and s

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )

          How is buying a BEV lowering one's CO2 emissions over buying a flexible fuel vehicle?
          . . .
          The claim is that with a BEV the CO2 emissions from the vehicle gets lower as the grid switches to more low CO2 emitting electricity sources. Is that happening in the USA?

          Where I live in the USA, depending in part on which supplier you get your electricity from, about 1/3 of the electricity is produced by nuclear, 1/3 from natural gas, 1/4 from coal, and the rest almost all from renewables. This state is also a bi

          • Where I live in the USA, depending in part on which supplier you get your electricity from, about 1/3 of the electricity is produced by nuclear, 1/3 from natural gas, 1/4 from coal, and the rest almost all from renewables.

            So you are about on par with the rest of the USA on low carbon energy, a bit high on nuclear but a bit low on hydro. What happens in 5, 10, maybe 20 years when they start shutting down those nuclear power plants? Are there any plans to build new reactors at the existing power plants? Or, build new nuclear power plants?

            Considering the better efficiencies of central power plants compared to ICE vehicles and the fact that ethanol from corn has an Energy Return On Investment close to zero, then we're already at the point where operating BEVs is better than operating Flex-Fuel vehicles for reducing pollution, including CO2.

            While I have my doubts I'll assume this is true for the sake of the argument, what happens going forward as we keep replacing coal and nuclear with natural gas? So long as we close more co

        • The claim is that with a BEV the CO2 emissions from the vehicle gets lower as the grid switches to more low CO2 emitting electricity sources.

          Sure, and also that a BEV powered by coal has lower CO2 emissions than an ICEV powered by gasoline. I haven't seen any comparison between BEVs and FFVs powered by 85% ethanol, but I suspect that the BEV may still win when all of the CO2 emitted by farming the feedstocks for the ethanol (mostly corn, in the US) are factored in. Biodiesel from algae would probably be better than a BEV powered by coal, though.

    • Was there a large difference in insurance premiums between the Toyota hybrid and a Tesla in your area?

      • I got insured as a new driver (had been car/insurance free for over 5 years) at $1250/yr in a 2021 Tesla Model Y Performance. The second best quote was $1800/yr, and the worst quote was over $4k/yr. YMMV.

    • I ended up getting a Tesla Model Y after considering the Rav4 Prime. With the premium package it was coming in close to $54k. That package has the faster charging circuit and some other options. The local dealer wanted to include 4k of useless add-ons, and the manufacturer also was making all of them with options I didn't want. Once Toyota announced they were cutting production the dealerships around here all changed their tune and started saying it will be MSRP + $10k, putting the car closer to $60k if you

      • Thanks for sharing your attempted Rav4 purchase experience - I think you confirmed my thinking. I'm glad I didn't waste more time on it because I don't even like the look of the car.

        Once Toyota announced they were cutting production the dealerships around here all changed their tune and started saying it will be MSRP + $10k, putting the car closer to $60k if you could find one.

        That makes sense - if dealers aren't able to get their usual volume of product they need to sell in order to stay in business, then they obviously have to make more on each car they sell (in order for the stealership to stay in business.)

        The process of attempting to purchase a car from a dealer put such a bad taste in my mouth that I'm never going to buy from a dealer.

        The last car I bought new was in 1999 - it was such a bad experience I've avoided doing it

  • asked staff to 'go super hardcore' to make a quarter-end delivery push

    Kind of curious what the quality level of those vehicles will be...

    also, in our boring dystopia, a billionaire asks the serfs to go "super hardcore" and apparently they do.

    interesting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      a billionaire asks the serfs to go "super hardcore" and apparently they do.

      Not just any billionaire, of course; an ambitious, charismatic(?) nerd-superhero who is idolized by many of his employees. Part of what makes Elon Musk, Elon Musk, and not just Yet Another Interchangeable Mediocre Tech CEO, is his ability to get large numbers of extremely intelligent people to work incredibly hard on his behalf, by convincing them (rightly or wrongly, but often rightly) that at his company, their work will make a big difference in the world.

      e.g. I'm pretty sure Jeff Bezos or Satya Nadella

  • ..arrived ahead of schedule. I was expecting a delay

  • Of course the 90% of the world population that makes up the third world can't afford electric vehicles, and won't have anywhere to recharge them for 100 years. But that won't matter in terms of transporting food and other essential goods, will it. If they all starve to death, their carbon footprint will go down, won't it.

    • Privileged moderator twats who lurve their Teslas can't take the idea that outside of the privilege of the industrialized world, there is no way to support electric vehicles. I'm just speaking the truth. I want the ICE car to go away, too. I just recognize that right now, the myopic idiots in North America and Europe not only don't understand that if you can't charge them because there is no power grid that can take over vehicle power distribution from gasoline/petrol/diesel, they don't want to understand.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      Of course the 90% of the world population that makes up the third world can't afford electric vehicles, and won't have anywhere to recharge them for 100 years.

      Of course, far less than 90% of the World's population is in the "third world", and the majority of those that do live in developing* countries live in cities where electricity is available and will likely be reliable well within 100 years.

      * I assume you meant developing countries because that's how people use the term "third world" nowadays, even

  • Tesla is able to adapt their software to work with whatever chips are available. Other car companies are not that agile.

    • You would usually have to redesign the hardware to use different chips, not just the software. And when you redesign the hardware, you have to test it again, to make sure it still works as intended. I doubt Tesla are doing that.

  • Tesla cars are coal powered cars. Well, they are on a global average 41.5% coal powered, and 67.5% fossil fuel powered, according to Wikipedia.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    BEVs are fine for a commuter car but they won't get a truck pulling tons of freight across a state, a ship across an ocean, an airplane off the ground, or a rocket into orbit. For that we need some kind of energy dense liquid fuel. It doesn't have to be petroleum, it could be a hydrocarbon from any source. It doesn't have to be a

    • Tesla cars are coal powered cars.

      Alex, I'll take "How to make sure that nobody reads my asinine post for $200."

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