Why is the press obsessed with Tesla's delivery projections? It's absurd

[Waiting4M3]

Delivery turn around time could become another bottleneck once the production rate ramps up quickly. In some ways it could be more challenging. Production is mostly done by robot, so once the process is tuned well, it's a lot of copy/paste. Delivery involves a lot more manual labor, and may have less economy of scale. Also while building a M3 may be much simpler and quicker than MS/S, delivering a M3 is not any easier, so once hundreds of thousands of M3 hit the loading dock, delivery will be even more challenged. It would be good to see Tesla have that process smoothed out

 

[GoTslaGo]

^^^^
Yes

 

[Trikkitt]

The miss is just a technicality. It doesn't include the 5100 vehicles manufactured and on delivery trucks at the time the quarter closed which is far larger than the normal number of vehicles in transit. The miss was due to shipping issues. What it means is the next quarter will be larger than expected because the missed cars will be included next quarter.

I think they actually missed because they had a production issue in May. My car was marked as in production for over 3 weeks, while normally its less than a week. When I spoke to my DS they advised that they were missing a part due to a delay from a supplier. This messed up their delivery timings abroad due to the shipping time (typically it takes 2 months from production end to delivery). The end result was that they tried really hard to deliver cars in Europe at the end of the quarter (mine I believe was one of 45 delivered that day from one service centre!). However those delays resulted in a lot more cars in transit at quarter end - I've been told that quite a few people have deliveries scheduled over the next couple of weeks....

So yes - most likely their Q3 figures will be boosted by the problems in May, but for now it looks bad. They did actually try really hard - mine shipped 18th May from Fremont and I took delivery 30th June... typically it takes 60 days, so they knocked two weeks off their normal timescales. They guys at Tilburg must have worked some overtime!

 

[Half Dollar Bill]

But if a company, any company, regularly misses their own projections it's a bad sign. Investors need to trust managements understanding of the market and their ability to deliver. That's why quarterly earnings calls are important to investors.

I agree.
If Tesla were a private company all we'd be talking about is the quarter-over-quarter growth rate.
But since they tap the debt market and issue new stock, investors have a right to be concerned that management is using their capital prudently. That right manifests into trust and that trust is partially exhibited by the ability to meet the broad goals management lays out for the company each year.
There's the appearance of a problem when a company regularly misses goals. I'd love to see Tesla's forecast accuracy improve. I think investors are currently giving them a break because they realize that they are in a very dynamic growth period. And I think that the ability to execute on the Model 3 production plan is the elephant in the room.