Tesla is on an extraordinary trajectory. Between the cars and the company?s potential in energy storage and distribution, it?s a catalyst for change, with its sights set well beyond the smug, green-affluence crowd. Yet, some other days, it can seem a bit like a moonshot that hasn?t yet left the upper atmosphere.
This July 4 weekend was one of those reality checks. CEO Elon Musk has targeted 500,000 global annual sales by 2020. Yet here we are halfway through 2016, and the automaker is projecting sales of just a tenth of that figure for the calendar year.
As a quarterly sales update just confirmed?released during the holiday weekend, so it wasn?t going to be positive?the California automaker is indeed a long, long way from getting there. Tesla announced that it sold 14,370 vehicles globally in the second quarter of 2016, including 9745 of the Model S sedan and 4625 Model X SUVs. That?s down slightly from the company?s total first-quarter deliveries of 14,820; it?s also the second consecutive quarter in which Tesla has missed its forecast target numbers, which were 16,000 for Q1 and 17,000 for Q2. The automaker is now anticipating that worldwide deliveries for this entire calendar year will be similar to last year?s total?about 50,000?despite having launched the Model X crossover.
Tesla cages this by noting that there were 5150 (additional) vehicles in transit to customers at the end of the second quarter; the automaker had cited 2615 vehicles on the way to customers a...