Tesla announced on Friday (March 29th) local time that its super factory in Fremont will officially take down its 6th millionth car. This is undoubtedly another new milestone for this global electric vehicle giant. However, behind the cheers and celebrations, the hidden dangers behind this number have actually begun to quietly emerge
The most intuitive comparison is that Tesla's production speed has not significantly accelerated from the official production of the 5th million electric vehicles to the current 6 million vehicles!
At present, it has been almost six months since Trump announced the discontinuation of his fifth millionth car in September 2023.
Prior to this, Tesla announced in early March 2023 the discontinuation of its fourth millionth vehicle - the most recent two breakthroughs in the million vehicle mark took about half a year.
This also indicates that although Tesla claims to have significantly increased production capacity in the past year, Tesla has not truly been able to accelerate production speed in the past six months. It is obvious that Tesla is not only facing some difficulties on the demand side, but its production capacity is not always fully utilized.
At present, Tesla has four super factories producing electric vehicles, namely those located in Fremont, California, USA and Oz, Texas, as well as super factories in Berlin, Germany and Shanghai, China.
In the past few years, Tesla's delivery volume has been growing at a rate of at least about 50% per year, but it has significantly slowed down since last year. Unlike other companies, Tesla has not provided clear delivery guidelines, so analysts can only try to use existing data to understand the specific situation.
Tesla will release its first quarter delivery data as early as next Monday, and its performance will undoubtedly be highly anticipated against the backdrop of a continuous decline in Tesla's stock price this year. The average expectation obtained from FactSet survey is that Tesla's electric vehicle delivery volume for the quarter may be 457000 units, higher than 423000 units in the first quarter of 2023, but lower than the expected 494000 units at the end of January this year.
Wedbush stated last Thursday that Tesla is facing a period of tense and dangerous conditions due to continued weak demand in China, which is expected to drag down the first quarter delivery data scheduled for release in the coming days.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who has been bullish on Tesla for a long time, said that the electric vehicle manufacturer experienced a "nightmare like" first quarter under the influence of a perfect storm triggered by demand issues, leading to a significant decrease in average market expectations. "Although some supply side issues such as planned factory shutdowns and the Berlin factory fire have affected vehicle supply, it is undeniable that this has been a tough quarter for CEOs Musk and Tesla."
Tesla's stock price has fallen nearly 13% in March, and has dropped nearly 30% since the beginning of the year, making it one of the worst performing components of the S&P 500 index.
According to the Wedbush report, "Based on the weak delivery data of the past two weeks, the baseline expectation for Tesla to deliver 2.1 million vehicles for the entire year this year may not be achievable at present. The delivery target of 2 million vehicles is more realistic, and our data will be correspondingly lowered."
Wedbush reiterated its stronger than market rating for Tesla stocks, but lowered the target price from $315 to $300, which is still 67% higher than the current price of the stock.