Question about 2019 full year guidance of 360,000 to 400,000. And please don't just click the disagree button because you don't like the question.
Back when Elon tweeted that Tesla would sell 500,000 cars this year, prompting the SEC mess, I recall reading on this forum that this was NOT material information since Tesla had actually guided for 500,000 on the conference - everyone was saying that the 360,000-400,000 was Model 3 only, and then the S/X was 100k. Someone even challenged this and a poster provided a link to the transcript which proved this was indeed true.
But now, it seems like it's flipped BACK to full year guidance for all cars being 360,000 to 400,000. Is this correct or is my memory playing tricks on me?
360k is deliveries, production is higher, 500k was clarified to be build rate (as Elon stated on the Ark podcast recorded before the call)
They are guiding up to 500k production if not this year, then Q3 '19-Q2 '20:
Q1 update letter:
Although we are driving towards higher internal goals, we reaffirm our prior guidance of 360,000 to 400,000 vehicle deliveries in 2019,
representing an increase of approximately 45% to 65% compared to 2018. Please note that vehicle production will be significantly higher
than deliveries, as it takes several weeks to transport cars from California to distant customers, especially in other countries, where they must also be processed by customs. Deliveries, production and customer orders, which are all materially different, are often conflated
when analyzing Tesla.
If our Gigafactory Shanghai is able to reach volume production early in Q4 this year, we may be able to produce as many as 500,000 vehicles globally in 2019. This is an aggressive schedule, but it is what we are targeting. However, based on what we know today, being able to produce over 500,000 vehicles globally in the 12-month period ending June 30, 2020 does appear very likely.