Buttressed by a series of price cuts, Tesla reported an all-time high in vehicle deliveries for Q2 2023 this week, solidifying its dominant position in the electric vehicle (EV) market.
A press release on July 2 announced that the company had delivered 466,140 EVs and produced 479,700. The bulk of these units has been the mass-market Model 3 and Model Y, followed by the premium Model S and Model X.
Demand for Tesla EVs has risen significantly since CEO Elon Musk announced the first of a series of price cuts at the start of the year, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
“A vast number of people want to buy a Tesla car but can’t afford it,” Musk had said in January, according to The Guardian. “These price changes really make a difference for the average consumer.”
The reduced cost of Tesla EVs has been an important driver of this year-over-year increase in deliveries of 83%.
Although Wall Street had only slightly underestimated Tesla’s Q2 deliveries at about 447,000, Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities called it a “trophy case quarter” for the EV manufacturer, according to CNN.
While Tesla’s final financial results for Q2 won’t be posted until July 19, the banner year has earned the company a market value of approximately $820 billion.
More broadly, demand for EVs in the U.S. has taken off lately, with analysts expecting a record 1.33 million EVs to be sold in 2023 — nearly 17% more than last year, as covered in The Dallas Express.
At the same time, the same federal tax credits that contributed to this surge in EV demand are expected to be pulled back soon, according to CNN.
Plus, the price cuts did see a drop in profit margins for Tesla in Q1 2023, with a 24% year-over-year tumble in revenue.
On the production side, Tesla’s Gigafactory facility in Austin is still rapidly expanding, with plans to add millions of square feet despite already spanning 2,516 acres. Production doubled quarter over quarter in Q1.
As The Dallas Express reported last month, Gigafactory Texas hit the major milestone of 10 million 4680 battery cell units produced. For perspective, that amounts to enough battery cells for roughly 12,000 Model Y vehicles.
