The firm said an unusually large number of cars were still in transit to customers, while it also blamed the “extreme” ramp-up in production which led to nearly half of the quarter’s vehicle being made in the final few weeks. But the electric vehicle maker faltered on its deliveries during the April-June quarter, which fell over 15 percent short of the company’s target and also 3 percent from its deliveries in the previous three-month period. The company also mentions that there are still 5,150 “customer-ordered vehicles” in transit on ships and trucks by the end of Q2.
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Brown, 40, of OH was killed May 7 near Williston, Florida, when his 2015 Tesla Model S (similar to the Model S pictured above) drove under an 18-wheel semi-trailer truck that had passed in front of him across a divided highway. But it would only give Tesla 80,000 deliveries this year, which is at the lower end of the company’s sales guidance.
The company has been working to ramp up its vehicle production recently.
Tesla said in a statement Friday US time, said Autopilot “does not turn a Tesla into an autonomous vehicle and does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility”. This has led to an investigation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into the circumstances that led to the accident. Experts in the auto industry said the company’s high-volume production plan is impossible to achieve given the fact that only a handful plants in North America have the capacity to build 500,000 vehicles a year.
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Tesla delivered 14,370 vehicles between April and June – its target was 17,000. That’s when the company will be manufacturing the Model 3 sedan, its first mass-market electric vehicle. At least 70,000 Tesla vehicles worldwide have the Autopilot feature, and the fatal crash has drawn renewed attention to the debate over what kind of guidelines the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration should set regarding semi-autonomous and self-driving cars on United States roads. There will be even more pressure to do so when Model 3 production starts, and Tesla has to begin filling a very large backlog of orders. Overall, the automaker’s prediction of producing 50,000 cars in latter half of 2016 is approximately equals to all of 2015.
