Electric-car maker Tesla (TSLA +0.93%) announced on Jan. 2 that it hit its target to produce 1.8 million vehicles in 2023. In total, it built about 1.846 million cars. Deliveries also surpassed 1.8 million, coming in at approximately 1.809 million units. In its deliveries and production update, Tesla said it delivered a total of 484,507 vehicles during the final quarter of the year, helping it achieve this annual target.
If you're trying to get a detailed understanding of Tesla's business momentum, I'm going to dive into how this performance appears in the context of both analyst expectations and the year-ago quarter. More importantly, I'll explore how many vehicles Tesla could deliver next year.
NASDAQ: TSLA
Key Data Points
Q4 deliveries: The raw numbers
Tesla's quarterly deliveries beat analysts' consensus forecast by about 7,500 units. Of the 484,507 vehicles the company delivered during Q4, 461,538 units were Tesla's lower-cost Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. Combined Model 3 and Y deliveries were up 19% year over year, and total deliveries increased 20%.
Tesla lumped deliveries of its Model S, Model X, Cybertruck, and Tesla Semi into a group called "other models." Deliveries of these vehicles came in at nearly 23,000, up from about 17,000 in the year-ago quarter.
Notably, Tesla's quarterly deliveries returned to sequential growth, rising 11% over Q3 deliveries. Total deliveries had fallen 7% sequentially last quarter as the company worked on some factory upgrades.
Highlighting Tesla's rapid growth, this fourth-quarter performance put trailing-12-month deliveries of more than 1.8 million up 38% year over year.
Looking ahead
As Tesla rolls into 2024, the company's recently launched Cybertruck will be an important topic for investors to follow over the coming quarters. The electric-car company delivered the first dozen Cybertrucks at a delivery event in late November.
Though Cybertruck deliveries have officially started, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has warned investors that initial production volume of the vehicle will be limited.
As Musk said during Tesla's third-quarter earnings call:
So I just want to temper expectations for Cybertruck. It's a great product. But financially, it will take, I don't know, a year to 18 months before it is a significant positive cash-flow contributor.
Demand for the vehicle, however, is "off the charts," Musk said. He noted during the third-quarter call that more than 1 million people have reserved the car.
With production being the primary constraint as Tesla fine-tunes manufacturing for the new vehicle, investors shouldn't expect big numbers from Cybertruck in absolute terms during 2024. But they should, at least, look for sequential growth in Tesla's "other models" throughout the year, with strong sequential growth rates during the last two quarters, setting Tesla up for somewhat substantial Cybertruck production volumes in 2025.
Production ramp ups in the auto industry follow an S-curve, with slow increases in production at first, followed by rapid growth and then moderation. It would be great to see Cybertruck production start ramping up quickly by the third or fourth quarter of 2024.
With continued momentum in Tesla's Model 3 and Y vehicles and the Cybertruck coming to market, investors should hope Tesla can deliver around 2.2 million or more vehicles this year. Of course, high interest rates make it more difficult for buyers to finance car loans than in years past, so there's always a risk that growth will disappoint.
Investors will get better insight into what to expect when the company reports its fourth-quarter financial results. This report is scheduled to be released on Wednesday, Jan. 24, after market close.
