How does it look good?
I know there was discussion about the InsideEV numbers, particularly the Tesla strategy is to shift deliveries early in the quarter overseas.
Is that a new strategy?
Don't they do they every year?
For instance looking at Q4 2015 vs. this quarter
2015: QTD: 4600 (US only)
2015: Total Q4: 17,400 (Worldwide)
2016: QTD: 3950 (US only)
2016: "Plan Q4" 25000 (Worldwide)
They are down 650 just in the US vs. last year, but expect to do 7.6k more (world wide) overall?
That could work if the mix of delivery shift (focus more on Europe vs. US early in the quarter) is very dramatically different than it was in 2015.
While it is tempting to look at it that way, it's not really informative.
I'll reiterate. With AP2 release, I am assuming that Tesla planned a factory shutdown and did not produce vehicles from Oct 1 to Oct 11, the day before the AP2 announcement. Assuming they then start building AP2 vehicles, after getting prepared to do so in the previous week and a half. They exited Q3 with a 5,500 vehicle overhang. I am assuming by wording, these are not demo/inventory vehicles.
Oct has ~2400 deliveries from the 5,500 overhang in US and Europe. Assume that 2,500 is delivered in Asia. ev-sales.blogspot.com reports ~1,100 Model S in China for October. They don't seem to track the Model X and I think the X is more popular at this point.
Factory builds 3 weeks worth of AP2 vehicles for Asia and Europe. We see production reports for Europe, including UK and AUS sig RHD Model X during this period. At a slower than Q3 pace, I'm assuming 2k/week which is 6,000 vehicles. These vehicles start to arrive in November, but really arrive in Dec.
Anything left over of the 5,500 overhang is also delivered in Nov.
Then the factory builds US AP2 vehicles in November. They start to arrive in mid November, but we really see about 1.5 weeks of production arrive due to slower shipping used right now. Between Nov 1 and Dec 31, there's 8.5 weeks. Assume 1.5 weeks cannot be utilized, either due to Thanksgiving or logistics at the end of quarter. Also use a 2k/week average production rate (they were at 2.1k/week in Q3). That's 14,000 vehicles for the U.S. market.
5,500 + 6,000 + 14,000 = 25,500.
Note that Tesla did not provide production guidance for Q4. But they did provide Q4 delivery guidance on Oct. 26th.