Tesla Production & Profitability

[EVNow]

Starting a new thread on this.

I am quoting the logical gap you seem to be having.

Producing the cars does not make money. In order to make money not only you need to make the cars, you must sell them (at a profit, hopefully) first!
You don't need to be a finance person to understand this simple thing. If the cars are not selling, ASPs do not matter (I don't even know if you include all the frequent repairs in your calculations, that's a second order stuff that's not important if the cars are not selling first).

The problem that could be trivially observed with Tesla is inventory buildup. That means they sell less cars than they make. Therefore it makes no sense to make more cars. Therefore they are not making any more cars than they do and instead it even makes sense to make fewer cars!. In fact... it appears that's exactly what they are doing (esp. on the S/X front where they supposedly have the best margins).

Of course since Tesla is paying their suppliers in arrears, this all creates another problem, where the increasing sales cashflow lets them pay off older amounts due easily, as the sales go down - so does the cashflow and suddenly they need to pay way more to suppliers than they are making on sales. This is just basic personal financing with some minimal differences.

The whole "we must really conserve cash" email from Elon the other day is just another sign they are really show on cash, why do you think that is? Because they are really flush with cash?

Anyway, don't want to attract any moderator ire for posting this stuff in the wrong place.

Musk is a drama queen. Don't go purely by what he says. Just as he can be very optimistic and exaggerate (robotaxi next year !), he can swing the other way too. He is basically saying just because they got some money doesn't mean they don't need to cut costs.

Yes, they need to sell the cars too, not just produce them. But, there is no evidence that they can't sell the cars they are producing. All evidence is they can't make enough cars - esp. in Q1. Inventory build up is mainly from Model 3 that they couldn't deliver in EU/China + just 2 weeks worth of sales in US (other manufacturers are happy to have an inventory of no more than 8 weeks). Infact Tesla needs to build up the inventory even more in order to quickly deliver the cars to customers - like 2 or 3 days after they order which would be ideal. There is a slight excess inventory of older 3 & X, which they will finally have to discount and sell. Just normal industry model change over practice.

They aren't making enough 3s because they don't have enough cells. How do we know this, for sure ? Because, if they had excess cells they would be making a lot of power walls and sell. There is a huge backlog of powerwall orders, as you may know.

Yes, repairs etc are taken into account. Infact most of the items are. I posted these in other threads, but repeating here.

BTW, profit is not a very useful metric. What they really need to focus on is positive cash flow. They can easily achieve that with small increase in sales over Q1.

Anyway, here is my Q2 estimate.

Here is my rough p&l model.

Here are my production, delivery estimates.

​

 

[verygreen]

He is basically saying just because they got some money doesn't mean they don't need to cut costs

and the urgency to do it now vs say in Q3 2018 is why?

But, there is no evidence that they can't sell the cars they are producing. All evidence is they can't make enough cars - esp. in Q1. Inventory build up is mainly from Model 3 that they couldn't deliver in EU/China + just 2 weeks worth of sales in US (other manufacturers are happy to have an inventory of no more than 8 weeks).

This does not pass the sniff test on so many levels.

1. there's a lot of model S inventory documented (relatively, of course, compared to model 3)
2. There's zero wait time to deliver a car. Order today, get one tomorrow/within a few days. ( => they have more than enough cars in inventory => they made more cars than they could sell)
3. The model3 inventory documented are US cars (because they cannot sell US cars in EU and China)
3.5 There's documented inventory in Europe too. And zero wait time to delivery as well.

All of this points at their inability to sell cars they are producing. And this is the reason why they are not producing more (they are clearly capable, they demonstrated it in the past).

If you start with incorrect assumptions, your conclusions are then incorrect as well and we cannot even begin to seriously look at everything after this part.

Therefore the rest of your post just does not make sense to me. They clearly make more than enough model 3s. Why they don't make the powerwalls? Well, you do know different cells go into powerwalls than into model 3s, right? Sure, Panasonic can probably switch between the two (perhaps even relatively quickly - did anybody ask them why not, and if Tesla requested any of these powerwall cells at all?), but there might be other reasons for why this is not being done. Perhaps the margins are not there, perhaps the volume is not there, perhaps there are some technical problems requiring some redesign, who knows. Did anybody ever ask Tesla for why the powerwalls are in such a short supply? What did they say?

Yes, I understand people invested a lot of money into Tesla and want them to succeed. I want them to succeed too, clearly model X is the best car on the market today (for me, anyway) and I will buy another once my lease is up or perhaps even earlier once the fire sales begin in a couple of weeks (you do realize those firesales are another sign of overproduction problem Tesla is having, right?)

People want to believe what they want to believe. Also the money-related topics are tricky for a bunch of reasons. All of that makes it hard to discuss "story" topics with true believers. They dismiss/hand-wave away evidence at hand.

If you do not see current Tesla inventory build-up, overproduction and inability to sell, we just don't have the necessary common ground to keep an intelligent discussion about this topic.

 

[J X 3]

What verygreen is saying is not factually accurate in a lot of places.

M3 production was limited by cells in Q1 but is not in Q2. Model 3 still had reservations that cover most of Q2 and there is no inventory buildup, that claim is complete nonsense. At the end of Q1 there was some high end inventory in the US and some in China in case of tariffs. They had a lot in transit due to international orders and production schedule for different geos.

S&X production was very low mostly because Tesla updated the production line and it will be bellow 25k per quarter in Q2 too as Tesla ramps the updated versions of these vehicles. S&X inventory would have meant the updated models get delayed so they can drain inventory.

Outlook for Q2 are deliveries up 50% at mid point that is not fewer cars.

S&X margins in Q1 were 20% or a bit less on those volumes and will be back towards 25% when volumes fully recover. Reduced volumes means higher depreciation per vehicle and a few other increasing costs, you certainly don't earn more by making fewer cars.

The cost cuts are about margins, Model 3 is way bellow 25% margins, it's not really about cash, they wouldn't have issues raising more at all and now they have 4.5-5 billions on hand. They even introduced leasing for Model 3 , leasing hurts on the cash flow side but they added it right after raising cash.
Cash has always been a problem fabricated by trolls. Tesla should have raised some cash last year but by not doing so, they just fed the troll and gave them an opportunity to turn it into a claimed issue.

They could have demand issues in Q3 ad Q4 with Model 3 but that remains to be seen, right now they are still more focused on boosting margins than on generating demand.

@ EVNow

Q2 deliveries outlook is 90-100k units, you are way bellow that and ASPs should be lower as M3 mix is hard down on SR and SR+. Model 3 margins will be way low too, no way they hit 20% in auto in Q2. Model 3 could be as low as 15% and S&X might reach 21-22%, depending on volumes.
Q4 should see substantial output in China, difficult to quantify volumes and margins for those.

 

[verygreen]

Q2 deliveries outlook is 90-100k units

I wonder how confident are you in this number? Do you really believe they'll hit 90k? 100k?

 

[Dutchie]

Estimate delivery time short ---> demand problem
Estimate delivery time long ---> production issues

Sigh....

 

[EVNow]

and the urgency to do it now vs say in Q3 2018 is why?

EM has been talking about cost cutting since Q4 ER. Infact Deepak talked about it as well. Listen to the ER. Tesla operations are actually very cost inefficient - so they do want to make them more efficient. He was giving the example of importing parts from China and then reexporting to China for service ! The way they had to quickly expand delivery operations in EU/China (and earlier in US) would have led to huge inefficiencies which they have to correct.

This does not pass the sniff test on so many levels.

1. there's a lot of model S inventory documented (relatively, of course, compared to model 3)
2. There's zero wait time to deliver a car. Order today, get one tomorrow/within a few days. ( => they have more than enough cars in inventory => they made more cars than they could sell)
3. The model3 inventory documented are US cars (because they cannot sell US cars in EU and China)
3.5 There's documented inventory in Europe too. And zero wait time to delivery as well.

In Q1 they simply couldn't deliver a lot of orders because they were in transit. Same for US (SR+ orders, for eg). BTW, Tesla has switched over to first producing cars in batches and then delivering - so sometimes you can easily get some variants of 3 and for some others you have to wait.

You have heard about Tesla's effort to end the wave, right ? This is to smooth out the deliveries and the hope as I noted is to able to deliver cars quickly after orders. Tesla is nowhere near that objective yet. They have too few cars in the pipeline. Ideally they should have about one month of inventory or about 25k to 35k 3s.

All of this points at their inability to sell cars they are producing. And this is the reason why they are not producing more (they are clearly capable, they demonstrated it in the past).

No - as I said, if they had excess cells they'd be selling more power walls. Both Tesla and Panasonic have said there have been problems with cell production. So you need to produce clear evidence of why you think they have all the cells they need but aren't producing enough cars, even though the inventory levels are very low by industry standards.

If you start with incorrect assumptions, your conclusions are then incorrect as well and we cannot even begin to seriously look at everything after this part.

Therefore the rest of your post just does not make sense to me. They clearly make more than enough model 3s. Why they don't make the powerwalls? Well, you do know different cells go into powerwalls than into model 3s, right? Sure, Panasonic can probably switch between the two (perhaps even relatively quickly - did anybody ask them why not, and if Tesla requested any of these powerwall cells at all?), but there might be other reasons for why this is not being done. Perhaps the margins are not there, perhaps the volume is not there, perhaps there are some technical problems requiring some redesign, who knows. Did anybody ever ask Tesla for why the powerwalls are in such a short supply? What did they say?

I agree - if you start with the assumption that they have a demand problem (this is the general assumption of bears/shorts) - you can't explain why they have such low model 3 inventory and why they aren't making power walls. You know they switched 2 lines from powerwall cells to automotive cells and have not switched back. They have problem with the yield etc. Read the Panasonic ER transcript. Yes, people have asked about cell production a lot - and the answer is in Q1 there was a problem. They hope to overcome that a little bit in Q2 because they are producing a lot of SR instead of a lot of LR - and starting June Panasonic hopes to correct the problem.

If you do not see current Tesla inventory build-up, overproduction and inability to sell, we just don't have the necessary common ground to keep an intelligent discussion about this topic.

You are completely ignoring all the headwinds they encountered in Q1. Cars on ships, inability to scale up delivery so quickly in China & EU, Pull forward of demand from Q1 to Q4 because of tax credit step down, seasonally low demand in Q1, upcoming s&x refresh etc. They even guided for 10+ extra inventory of cars in Q1 (during Q4 ER) ! Why ?

Basically, we don't know where the s&x demand is, since Q1 was such a weird quarter. We have to see how Q2 goes - but the refreshed cars seem to be not being produced at full speed (which they anticipated in ER). As for as Model 3 in concerned Q2 will be more than Q1, I'm fairly sure. The exact amount is still unknown since we don't know how the cell production is going.

I don't expect to completely convince you - since you don't have all the necessary background and context. But I've given some pointers, you should be able to read up on those and make up your mind.

 

[EVNow]

Q2 deliveries outlook is 90-100k units, you are way bellow that and ASPs should be lower as M3 mix is hard down on SR and SR+. Model 3 margins will be way low too, no way they hit 20% in auto in Q2. Model 3 could be as low as 15% and S&X might reach 21-22%, depending on volumes.
Q4 should see substantial output in China, difficult to quantify volumes and margins for those.

I'm not convinced the Model 3 production ramp up is happening quickly enough. Ofcourse S&X deliveries would depend on how many refreshed S+X they can make. They have just started delivering them, so not sure they can deliver 25k.

Estimate delivery time short ---> demand problem
Estimate delivery time long ---> production issues

Can you define short & long ?

If you see ev-cpo, there are just 488 Model 3s in US. That is less than 1/2 day worth of sales ! So, they are clearly very low on 3 inventory. Only in some kind of la-la land would that be considered soft demand. 997 Model S and 256 Model X. So, they do have quite a few Model S to sell (they had 13k S+X at the end of Q1 globally, including floor models). I'd say demand for older version of Model S is soft. Model 3 and X are robust.
​

 

[dennis]

The whole "we must really conserve cash" email from Elon the other day is just another sign they are really show on cash, why do you think that is? Because they are really flush with cash?

If you listened to the Q1 conference call it is much easier to understand the intent of Musk's email. When questioned by analysts about the need to raise money he commented that by not raising capital in the past year+ it forced Tesla to develop financial discipline and capex efficiency.

Now that Tesla has raised $2.4B in new funds Musk doesn't want the employees to feel fat, dumb and happy and get back to the laissez faire behavior they may have exhibited in the past when they were losing money every quarter and raising new capital every year. The simplest way to explain that to the rank and file is to take the Q1 losses and extrapolate them to show how long the new capital will last. Yeah it is a deliberately simplistic analysis but digestible by people who know nothing about finance.

Speaking of which, if Tesla breaks even in a quarter on a GAAP basis, because of depreciation and stock based compensation they will generate $500M-$1B in operating cash flow even with deliveries less that 4Q18. After spending $500M-$600M on capex they will add cash to the balance sheet. This assumes no debt instruments come due in that quarter and no big additions to inventory like happened in Q1 when they filled the international pipeline with M3's.

So yeah, Tesla is now flush with cash, and Elon wants to keep it that way.

 

[verygreen]

EM has been talking about cost cutting since Q4 ER. Infact Deepak talked about it as well. Listen to the ER.

Somehow the cutting gets more and more extreme though.

In Q1 they simply couldn't deliver a lot of orders because they were in transit.

So I am sure there's some sort of a registration public document that you can point me at that shows a huge wave of deliveries at the beginning of Q2?

Same for US (SR+ orders, for eg)

This must be why people I know in Quebec placed an order for SR+ at the end of March, got their car delivered in the last week of March. Got it.

BTW, Tesla has switched over to first producing cars in batches and then delivering

no, they did not. Model3s were always produced in batches. Model3 order page always said you are not getting a new build but rather an inventory match. There was a bit of wtf over that on the forums even that I remember.

Ideally they should have about one month of inventory or about 25k to 35k 3s.

They only delivered 51k model3s in Q1. That's just 17k cars per month on average.

I guess it remains to be seen what Q2 delivery numbers are. We can revisit this topic in July.

you can't explain why they have such low model 3 inventory

Here's the problem. I don't see low inventory. Pretty much any model3 variant - I can order and get delivered very quickly. There are also tons of pictures. I still don't get what proof you demonstrate that they don't have model3 inventory. Because they don't make powerwalls? That's completely unrelated in my view even if you think they somehow compete for insufficient Panasonic battery capacity (which Panasonic denies, BTW. Tesla says they can do 24GWh/year. That's 2GWh/month. If we assume Tesla only does 74kWh LR packs to be generous (as we know they don't), that's 27027 packs per month. Or 81081 packs per quarter. So why did not they make 81k+ model3s again? What did I miss?

The so called bears do seem to have quite a few facts in their favor. They did quite a few correct predictions in the last several months. As such why should I dismiss their argument?

You are completely ignoring all the headwinds they encountered in Q1. Cars on ships, inability to scale up delivery so quickly in China & EU, Pull forward of demand from Q1 to Q4 because of tax credit step down, seasonally low demand in Q1, upcoming s&x refresh etc

And all of that was totally unpredictable, right? Nobody could have seen any of that would happen at all, they totally did not expect to sell in EU, did not expect to have a ramp-up in production, did not expect the s&x refresh, did not expect the seasonally low demand, ...

Basically, we don't know where the s&x demand is, since Q1 was such a weird quarter. We have to see how Q2 goes

Agreed, we just need to wait until Q2, only 1.5 months left and revisit it then. I am not in a rush. We'll get a good reading very soon, the more deep the sales/price drops are, the more likely the Q2 numbers are to be low (for S/X, I personally only care about the X anyway).

 

[EVNow]

Somehow the cutting gets more and more extreme though.

I work in a very profitable high tech company. Our CFO sent a similar mail sometime back. But nobody bothered to report it nor did the stock drop 5%.

IMO, Tesla is a very inefficient place. Because of extreme pressure to do things quickly, they have been doing things very inefficiently. Lots of overtime, paying a lot more for transportation etc.

Ofcourse poor choice of words by EM, so the words can be easily used by bears to push their agenda. Nothing new in that ofcourse.

Anyway, look at the ev-cpo website. Very low inventory, as I said. How fast they can deliver a car depends on a lot of factors - so the correct way to figure out what's happening is to look at the inventory. That is why the industry keeps a close tab on days inventory.

ps : What is your guess for deliveries this quarter ? We can compare to the actuals in July.

Agreed, we just need to wait until Q2, only 1.5 months left and revisit it then. I am not in a rush. We'll get a good reading very soon, the more deep the sales/price drops are, the more likely the Q2 numbers are to be low (for S/X, I personally only care about the X anyway).

Are you talking about refreshed or old inventory ? Zero chance of discounts on refreshed, since they have orders to fill. Ofcourse they will discount old inventory.

which Panasonic denies, BTW. Tesla says they can do 24GWh/year. That's 2GWh/month. If we assume Tesla only does 74kWh LR packs to be generous (as we know they don't), that's 27027 packs per month. Or 81081 packs per quarter. So why did not they make 81k+ model3s again? What did I miss?

Where did Panasonic deny ? In their ER they said they had issues, they have identified the problem and they will have new jig starting June.

That 24 kWh was not average in Q1, that was peak and only achieved towards the end. Infact EM said they shouldn't have any cell issues (for Model 3) in Q2. We'll see.

 

[verygreen]

Anyway, look at the ev-cpo website. Very low inventory, as I said

Of course Tesla actively combats attempts to scrape their inventory by 3rd parties to hide exact this problem.

It's very easy to verify. Order a car from Tesla. See the VIN not on ev-cpo being delivered

I agree inventory counts are very important, that's why you see crowdsourced efforts to count/document it (by so called "shorts" mostly, who believe there is a lot of excess inventory), and I guess that's why Tesla fights it and tries to hide it?

What other inventory levels research did you do outside of checking on ev-cpo, I wonder?

ps : What is your guess for deliveries this quarter ? We can compare to the actuals in July.

You see, I don't really care about it myself. I have no position, I don't trade. I do own a Tesla car and I enjoy exploring it from the inside, so the number better be high enough to sustain Tesla. But will it? There are worrying reports (or somebody is doing a real good job of pumping just the bad news and completely omitting the good ones (are there any at all lately?)) all around though. Stock is going down and while on the surface it does not matter much, we all know it does not matter much until it suddenly does.

I have been playing this whole Tesla game from a very pessimistic point ever since I got to know them deeper and so far this approach paid off (I am not talking about stock, but mostly my decision to lease vs buy the second car, selling my small stock position that I bought in early 2017 before doing any research based on just on hype alone, not buying FSD when I got the second car and so on)

If you need a number, we can be sure it's going to be below 90k that they seem to be guiding for.

Are you talking about refreshed or old inventory ? Zero chance of discounts on refreshed, since they have orders to fill. Ofcourse they will discount old inventory.

Both refreshed and old inventory will see discounts, as always. Of course there would be deeper discounts on old inventory, as always.

Where did Panasonic deny ? In their ER they said they had issues, they have identified the problem and they will have new jig starting June.

Panasonic said they have 35GWh capacity installed (actual yields were not actually voiced, but Tesla said 24GWh was actually produced).

That 24 kWh was not average in Q1, that was peak and only achieved towards the end

And this was documented where?

Here's a report from Aug 2018 (!) that they had actually achieved 20GWh: Tesla confirms Gigafactory 1 battery production at ‘~20 GWh’ – more than all other carmakers combined

So are you saying they actually had then ramped down? (20GWh is still 67567 LR packs)

 

[dennis]

So I am sure there's some sort of a registration public document that you can point me at that shows a huge wave of deliveries at the beginning of Q2?

Check out this post in the Investor's Roundtable thread:
Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019 Investors' Roundtable

Global cumulative EV sales data was just published on the EV-salesblog:
YTD April 2019:
Tesla: 87k / Model 3: 70k / Model S&X: 17k

YTD March 2019 was:
Tesla: 63k / Model 3: 50,9k / Model S&X: 12,1k

Therefore, April 2019:
Tesla: 24k / Model 3: 19,1k / Model S&X: 4,9k

April 19 vs. January 2019:
Tesla +13,7k (+133%) / Model 3: +11,8k (+162%) / Model S&X: +1,9k (+63%)

 

[verygreen]

Therefore, April 2019:
Tesla: 24k / Model 3: 19,1k / Model S&X: 4,9k

so.. of those 19,1k model3s @EVNow says a bunch was backlog spillover from Q1. I think the quoted numbers were as high as 10k? So actual new sales were then just 9k?

Is the idea such that Tesla always delivers 50% (or whatever the number was) of cars in last 15 days of quarter?

 

[dennis]

so.. of those 19,1k model3s @EVNow says a bunch was backlog spillover from Q1. I think the quoted numbers were as high as 10k? So actual new sales were then just 9k?

Is the idea such that Tesla always delivers 50% (or whatever the number was) of cars in last 15 days of quarter?

Don't be obtuse. While Tesla quarters have always been backloaded, Q1 was an aberration because Tesla was releasing Model 3 to international markets for the first time. There was the logistical issue of filling the pipeline exacerbated by delays due to labels that needed to be reworked (China) and a supplier who was behind in delivering a needed part (Europe).

In any given month there will be customers who ordered late in the prior month who took delivery this month, and customers who ordered late in the current month who will take delivery next month. So subtracting the cars in transit to customers at the end of a quarter from the deliveries in the first month of a new quarter does not give you the order rate since it doesn't account for orders late in the first month that will be delivered in the second month. BTW the 10K in-transit number an the end of Q1 was for S+X+3, not just for Model 3.

Just to be clear, no auto manufacturer operates with a backlog. The majority of cars purchased come from the dealer's lot or through an inventory trade with another dealer.Buyers of $40K cars don't expect to have to wait weeks or months for a car to be built unlike buyers of $90K cars. Do Ford/GM/BMW/Mercedes/etc. have a demand problem because there is 60-90 days worth of inventory for each of those brands in the distribution channel waiting for buyers? Tesla has the lowest inventory vs. sales % of any car manufacturer by a large margin.

 

[verygreen]

The majority of cars purchased come from the dealer's lot or through an inventory trade with another dealer

yup, I know this.

Buyers of $40K cars don't expect to have to wait weeks or months for a car to be built unlike buyers of $90K cars

Buyes of 90k cars don't expect to wait weeks or months either (not this buyer here at least).

Do Ford/GM/BMW/Mercedes/etc. have a demand problem because there is 60-90 days worth of inventory for each of those brands in the distribution channel waiting for buyers? Tesla has the lowest inventory vs. sales % of any car manufacturer by a large margin.

there's an important difference.

The inventory is owned by dealers. It's called "channel stuffing" for a reason, the manufacturer sold already (and got paid), now the goods are held by retail outlets who pay interest to the banks and therefore are very interested in selling ASAP.

Don't be obtuse. While Tesla quarters have always been backloaded, Q1 was an aberration

We'll see in just ~1.5 months. That's not all that long.

 

[3Victoria]

Estimate delivery time short ---> demand problem
Estimate delivery time long ---> production issues

Sigh....

This is pointing that FUDsters spin all-things-Tesla negative. Eg: Not raising money means they can't, raising money means they are desperate. All roads lead to bankruptcy, according to the FUDsters.

Tesla is innovating and moving fast, making mistakes and fixing them. Its inefficient, live with it.

 

[WarpedOne]

All roads lead to bankruptcy, according to the FUDsters.

Sorry, that is according to elon ... only 10 months left ...

 

[EV-CPO]

Anyway, look at the ev-cpo website. Very low inventory

I'm not sure how you're coming to this conclusion or what you're comparing it against, but over the last 5-7 days, Tesla has been adding hundreds of new (and used) cars to available, listed inventory. Model S new inventory is nearly at 1000 cars now, which historically is pretty high compared to the last two years. I think the highest it's been has been around 2000. So I wouldn't call 1000 cars "very low" by any measure. Also, Model S and X new inventory has been at zero cars for many months at a time last year.

A few weeks ago, Tesla started listing between 50 and 100 Model 3s in inventory. They've now bumped that up to over 500 (now about 450 as a lot have been sold). New inventory cars S/X/3 are being added everyday.

So if I were to classify it in any way, I'd say that current listed inventory levels are well above historical averages.

Of course Tesla actively combats attempts to scrape their inventory by 3rd parties to hide exact this problem.

I'm not sure what makes you think this. Scraping all of their available inventory from their public facing website is not hindered (currently). And there are other websites also scraping for new inventory by doing brute-force VIN hunting for pre-production, in-production, or in-transit cars that have never been listed on the Tesla public facing website. Tesla stopped this practice by now requiring a token for Model 3 listings, but Model S and X inventory VINs can still be found by brute force.

 

[EVNow]

Of course Tesla actively combats attempts to scrape their inventory by 3rd parties to hide exact this problem.

It's very easy to verify. Order a car from Tesla. See the VIN not on ev-cpo being delivered

If the inventory is so low, it shouldn't surprise you that some other VIN gets delivered. Also, I don't think they show the car unless it is already in a delivery center - because the purpose is to tell us what we can quickly get locally.

 

[EVNow]

I'm not sure how you're coming to this conclusion or what you're comparing it against, but over the last 5-7 days, Tesla has been adding hundreds of new (and used) cars to available, listed inventory. Model S new inventory is nearly at 1000 cars now, which historically is pretty high compared to the last two years. I think the highest it's been has been around 2000. So I wouldn't call 1000 cars "very low" by any measure.

I specifically said Model S inventory is not low.

Also, a few weeks ago, Tesla started listing between 50 and 100 Model 3s in inventory. They've now bumped that up to over 500 (now about 450 as a lot have been sold). New inventory cars S/X/3 are being added everyday.

500 is low for a model selling some 10k per month.