Tesla Sales Fall For Second Straight Quarter

Elon Musk’s Tesla has revealed that global electric vehicle (EV) sales have fallen for the second straight quarter.

Telsa in an update said that in the second quarter, it “had produced approximately 411,000 vehicles and delivered approximately 444,000 vehicles. We deployed 9.4 GWh of energy storage products in Q2, the highest quarterly deployment yet.”

Tesla also said during the three months from April to June it manufactured 386,576 Model 3/Ys, and delivered 422,405 of them. For other models it manufactured 24,255 and delivered 21,551.

Sales decline

According to Tesla’s update, it produced a total of 410,831 EVs and delivered 443,956 in total.

This 443,956 total is down 4.8 percent from 466,140 EVs that Tesla sold the same period a year ago.

That said, it was slightly better than the 436,000 that analysts had been expecting.

The news helped push a 10 percent rise in Tesla’s stock, which has declined 7 percent so far in 2024, after being down 40 percent over the past year.

The Tesla decline should come as no surprise, considering that global demand for EVs worldwide is slowing.

This slowdown can be blamed on a number of factors including economic uncertainty, high interest rates, and geopolitical tensions that has seen the United States (up to 100 percent) and Europe Union (up to 38 percent) impose stiff tariffs on Chinese-made EVs.

Earlier this week however China’s three largest premium electric vehicle (EV) makers reported strong delivery figures for June, but the numbers were fuelled by discounts and incentives that affect their longer-term ability to reach profitability.

Tesla’s performance comes amidst intensifying competition, particularly from Chinese firms including BYD, Nio and Li Auto, with BYD in the fourth quarter temporarily taking Tesla’s top spot as the world’s biggest electric vehicle maker.

Tesla itself has tried repeatedly to cut prices of its EVs in key markets to reinvigorate demand, but the Elon Musk firm is also contending with an ageing model lineup and high average selling prices.

The cheapest of the current Model 3 vehicle has a starting price of about $39,000.

Ongoing decline

And this is now the second straight quarter of a sales decline for Tesla.

In April Tesla revealed that for the first quarter profits had fallen 55 percent, and revenues had experienced their largest decline since 2012.

For the first quarter ending 31 March 2024, Tesla had posted a net profit down 55 percent at $1.13bn, well short of the net profit of $2.5bn in the same year-ago quarter.

There was also similar news regarding revenues, which were down 9 percent at $21.3bn, from $23.3bn in the same year-ago quarter.

That came shortly after Tesla had announced its biggest-ever round of layoffs, affecting more than 10 percent of staff worldwide (or 14,000 jobs).

Those layoffs came as shareholders voted to reinstate Elon Musk’s record-breaking $56bn pay package that a Delaware judge had voided in January, ruling that the board of directors had acted as “supine servants” to the chief executive.

Tesla will post its financial results for the second quarter of 2024 after market close on Tuesday, 23 July 2024.