Describing Tesla's Q1 deliveries as "light" would be an understatement. Here is data I use to calculate deliveries:
China: Weekly insurance numbers. This data is very reliable. In addition to that, we also get monthly China domestic sales numbers from CPCA (China Passenger Car Association), and historically, the two data sources have been always very close when we look at quarterly sales.
Europe: Each country in Europe releases its own monthly registration numbers. You can see these
here. Many countries also release data before the month is over. The data quality is excellent.
US: There is no official sales data for the entire US. We never find out the actual numbers. The best way to calculate US sales after the quarter is over is to calculate Tesla sales in all other countries in the world and then subtract that number from the global number released by Tesla. That's what I do. The best way to calculate US sales during the quarter is to calculate inventory carried over from the last quarter to the current quarter, plus, all production in the US in this quarter, minus, estimated inventory at the end of this quarter. This calculation is complicated. I don't want to share the latest data I have but to give you an idea, here is what my inventory calculation looks like excluding this quarter and the last one:
My method relies on calculating production from VIN data reasonably accurately. Unfortunately, Tesla doesn't release production by factory. They only release the global production number. In addition, we get China production numbers from CPCA. That means I need to calculate production for Fremont, Giga Texas and Giga Berlin. I use VIN data to do that. Normally, we never find out the actual numbers for any of these factories but in the last shareholder letter, Tesla mentioned an important number. They said, "in 2023, the Tesla Fremont factory produced nearly 560,000 vehicles".
Tesla released the shareholder letter on January 24, 2024. Therefore we can go back and check what my number was before that. Here is the production table that
I tweeted on January 3, 2024. I was calculating 558,838 for Fremont, pretty much in line with Tesla's "nearly 560,000" statement. This suggests my calculations for Giga Texas and Giga Berlin should be reasonably accurate too. I use VIN data for those factories too.