Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Blog Bloomberg: Model 3 Production Could Approach 80,000 Cars

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Tesla could surprise watchers next week by announcing a significantly more productive quarter than analysts predicted.

Bloomberg reported that the electric carmaker may have built close to 80,000 Model 3 sedans, much higher than the average analyst estimate of 64,000. Bloomberg noted that the difference is worth about $800 million in Model 3 cars.

To help piece the production picture together, Bloomberg launched last year an online tool to estimate the number of Model 3s coming out of Tesla’s factory. The tracker leverages Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs), social media reports, and direct communication with Tesla owners.

“There’s been a flood of new VINs as Tesla rushes to deliver the car across multiple continents for the first time,” Bloomberg reported. “Submissions have been notably frequent from Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. A new lower-priced edition of the of the Model 3—the $37,500 Standard Range Plus—has finished strong in the U.S. There’s little known about the launch in China.”

The tracker has been accurate so far, forecasting Tesla’s actual output over the two past quarters within less than a percentage point. However, Bloomberg admits that the projection is an “uncomfortable place to be for an experimental model” since it differs greatly from analyst estimates.

“Those international VINs inflated the Bloomberg model so quickly that the projection required a new statistical smoothing method, which spread the extreme surplus out over a quarter,” the Bloomberg report said. “Until Tesla reports its latest production numbers, there’s no way to confirm the accuracy of these changes.”

 
Last edited by a moderator:
All the analysts are predicting more like 64,000. Bloomberg has been more accurate than anyone else's guesses in previous quarters, though it seems their model is overshooting based on not fully accounting for overseas delivery delays this quarter. But I wouldn't be surprised if they were closer than everyone else, and it comes in around 75,000 for Q1.
 
Last edited:
Not sure why this is under the MX deliveries?

I have seen an article, may have been FB, where a VIN tracker for MS and MX suggested that if the highest VIns seen was a reflection of production if not sales, then they're on for 25k in the quarter which is a fairly full quarterly number. The difference from previous quarters seemed to be an increase in the share which are MX.

If you take the 75k M3 number plus the educated guess above, we could be looking at 100k for the quarter, bang on the 400k for the year run rate Musk accidently tweeted

Given the price cuts and other events, I imagine sales from inventory have been strong so I wouldn't be surprised in sales were at or above production. Time will tell, I'm not putting my house on it either way.
 
Well, in general, analysts are going to estimate delivered vehicles, since that's what counts on the income statement. This quarter is going to have a production and delivery mismatch, so it wouldn't be at all surprising that production is far higher than deliveries. Didn't Elon already say they'll have 10k cars in transit?