Is anyone else concerned about the pace of sales in Europe? Looking at the first month of each quarter, April far outpaced January, but that doesn't tell us much, as there were practically no Model 3 sales in January and at least the early part of April was boosted by Q1 spillover "in transit" sales.
Comparing February to May is more concerning. In February, deliveries in Norway, Netherlands and Spain (the only countries that provide near real time data), deliveries totaled 1,717. The figures for the three countries in May total total 447 through today (for Norway) and 5/10 for Netherlands and Spain. Norway is the important number; Netherlands and Spain's deliveries on any given day are negligible. So with a few days to go before the halfway mark, we are at only 26% of February's deliveries.
And that's without considering that February is a short calendar month, not to mention that Model 3 sales didn't start in the Netherlands until 2/6 and Norway until 2/13.
It's very hard to believe that June deliveries in Europe will come close to March. And so far, there is nothing to indicate that S/X deliveries will be any better in Q2 than Q1. On the plus side, the US deliveries of Model 3 should be much better in June than March due to the impending tax credit reduction, and Canadian sales will benefit from the new gov't rebates. My guess is that China's numbers will also be up for the quarter as a whole as long as there is no repeat of the February paperwork fiasco. I am a bit concerned that the tariff issues may affect consumer optimism in China and cause some to put off a purchase, but overall, China should surprise to the upside. The number of ships bound for China this quarter, at least to date, indicates that there is not a large inventory backlog.
I suppose there should be some comfort taken by the fact that we are not seeing price reductions, fire sales and other announcements that would indicate a low level of demand. But we're not hearing much of anything regarding sales. Maybe that's a good thing. But the pessimist in me says that when the narrative shifts from production and deliveries to FSD (Elon's comments at Autonomy Day that expenses are all about investments in autonomy, and the statement on the investor call that the future valuation of the company will be driven by FSD), I get nervous that they are accelerating the narrative on FSD b/c there is nothing else to talk up.
TL;dr version: It's a rainy, cold, miserable day in Boston and I didn't want to suffer alone.
