Tesla may narrowly miss a record-breaking quarter

The American electric car manufacturer Tesla wanted to break its record of 90,700 vehicles delivered in the second quarter. However, Tesla is likely to miss the target by a narrow margin. Apparently, Tesla’s head of production, Peter Hochholdinger, has also left the Californian electric car company.

Close, but not close enough for the targeted record: Electrek has reported that Tesla has delivered more than 49,000 vehicles in North America in the second quarter, 22,000 of which were delivered in June. Although there are still more than 12,000 additional orders (more than 34,000 orders in June), it is unlikely that all these vehicles can be delivered by the end of the month – 5,000 of the 12,000 additional orders still do not have a delivery date. Tesla would have to be able to deliver between 33,000 – 36,000 vehicles in their largest market, North America, in June to exceed its previous record of 90,700 vehicle deliveries in Q4 2018. This figure is no longer within reach, though very close.

Not such a bad effort though, since earlier this month it was reported that Tesla was also aiming to make 1,000 deliveries per day. Despite missing the quarterly record, according to Electrek, the goal of 1000-deliveries-per-day goal was indeed achieved last week.

Elon Musk acknowledges that this target will be missed. “The reality is that we are on track to set an all-time record, but it will be very close,” wrote the Tesla boss in an e-mail to his employees. “However, if we go all out, we can definitely do it! We already have enough vehicle orders to set a record, but the right cars are not yet all in the right locations.”

The missed targets also coincides with an important personnel issue: Electrek claims that the company’s head of production, Peter Hochholdinger, has left the company. This has apparently been confirmed by two insider sources independently of each other. Electrek maintains they have been unable to get a response from either Tesla or Hochholdinger on the issue. Needless to say, it remains unclear who is in line for Hochholdinger’s job.

Hochholdinger is a German production expert who switched from Audi to Tesla in 2016 to start the mass production of the Model 3. In this role, he was considered a key figure at Tesla to make the company’s processes more efficient. At Audi, Hochholdinger was most recently responsible for the production of the A4, A5 and Q5 series in the German car-making city of Ingolstadt and was thus responsible for an annual production of over 400,000 cars.

electrek.co, cnbc.com, electrek.co (Tesla head of production)