“The quality of our new locations is also improving as many shopping malls now consider us the new standard for an anchor tenant based on the amount of foot traffic that we draw and our very high revenue per square foot”, said Musk in the earnings report released Wednesday.
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The Tesla Model 3 has been created to be efficiently produced and benefit from a “machine that makes the machine” approach on the assembly line, according to Mr Musk.
Tesla’s second-quarter financials also missed Wall Street’s expectations.
Electric vehicle developer Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) expects to “blow people’s minds” with its self-driving auto technology, although its results failed to achieve quite the same effect.
Tesla, run by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Elon Musk, said its net loss widened to $293.2 million, or $2.09 per share, in the second quarter, from $184.2 million, or $1.45 per share, a year earlier.
However, Tesla said it is on track to deliver around 50,000 new Model S and Model X cars in the second half of 2016, at a “steady production rate of 2,200 vehicles per week” in the third quarter, and 2,400 per week in the fourth quarter.
“During Q2, we invested $295 million in capital expenditures to increase production capacity, accelerate Gigafactory construction, and expand customer support infrastructure”. “We continue to believe demand for Tesla vehicles is strong, and believe anything Tesla can do to address demand would benefit the stock”, analyst Ben Kallo wrote. “And then we just managed to sort of climb out of hell basically part way through June”.
“Now, the production line is humming”.
In the last three months, Tesla took on a multibillion dollar acquisition, ramped up factory production and revealed a broad, new corporate strategy.
Tesla is making strides in its autonomous driving technology and Chief Executive Elon Musk says what the company is developing blows his mind. “If I’m this close to it and it’s blowing me away, it’s really going to blow others away when they see it for the first time”.
Federal safety regulators are investigating Tesla’s “autopilot” semi-autonomous driving technology after a driver who was using the feature on his Model S was killed May 7 in a crash in Florida.
The challenge is not so much in the hardware, which Musk said, is already there.
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“We’re not totally clear why they opened an investigation because they actually had all the information before they opened a formal investigation”, he said. Tesla touted a reduction in labor hours per auto, supplier discounts, more efficient factories, and quarterly capital expenditures falling about half of last year’s $400M.
