Trouble is piling up for Elon Musk, and this time it’s Tesla who worries. The group sold fewer cars than expected in the second quarter, even if it still sold just over 250,000, an increase of 27% compared to the second quarter of 2021.
The Shanghai Tesla gigafactory was closed for several weeks
When we know that in June, the French car market fell by more than 16% in the first half of this year, Tesla’s performance would have been enough to rejoice its boss Elon Musk and its shareholders, except that this figure is lower by 18 % to what the group had sold in the first quarter. This is the first time in two years that the pace of sales has slowed despite the opening of two new factories since the start of the year, in Germany and the United States. Tesla is in turn caught up in the problems that have plagued the automotive sector for months.
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The group mentions persistent problems in its supply chains. So far it had resisted the shortage of semiconductors rather well, thanks to the agility of its embedded software. By rewriting lines of computer code, these could adapt to changes in electronic chips, but after months of shortages, it also becomes complicated for Tesla.
Especially since the manufacturer suffered the backlash of the Covid awakening in China. Its Shanghai gigafactory, which accounts for nearly half of its global production, was closed for several weeks due to confinement. Finally, there is the slower-than-expected ramp-up of its new plants in Berlin and Austin.
Elon Musk: “Austin plant loses crazy amount of money”
Elon Musk does not hide his concern. The quarter was very hard, acknowledged the billionaire. The Austin plant is losing a crazy amount of money, Elon Musk recently confessed in an interview with a Silicon Valley gazette. That of Berlin loses a little less but they are gigantic incinerators of money at the moment. He again spoke of the risk of disaster for the manufacturer, as he had already done in 2018. Tesla does not, however, revise down its forecast to deliver 1.5 million vehicles this year, which may be up a little the morale of Elon Musk, whose fortune has shrunk by 62 billion since the start of the year. Musk who still can not complete the takeover of Twitter due to the fall of Tesla shares on the stock market. When it doesn’t want, it doesn’t want…
Pierrick Fay