First Quarter Tesla Sales Drop Isn’t All That Unique

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Tesla has shown its first quarter numbers and they’re not so great. New vehicle deliveries reached 386,810 units by the end of March, constituting an 8.5% drop versus Q1 2023, says CNBC. And the bad news just starts there.

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Industry analysts cited by FactSet estimated Tesla was going to deliver about 457,000 units in Q1 2024, so that’s a big gap. This revelation has apparently spooked some investors when the news hit on April 2, with shares down 4.9% after the close of trading.

While this is a blow to the company, we’ve seen Tesla weather worse. Still, the future for it and EV lines in general seem uncertain.

Some publications, like the much-lauded New York Times, claim this dip in Q1 sales proves Tesla is slipping. Perhaps the Texas-based automaker won’t dominate the EV market to the degree it has in the past.

But considering there are more and more entrants into the market, that was bound to happen sooner or later. The real problem for everyone, including Tesla, is the possibility that EV sales might not rebound, or at least enough to justify heavy investment in it.

After all, Ford recently announced it’s cutting about 1,400 workers from the factory which makes the F-150 Lightning. Other automakers have also signaled they’re scaling back on once aggressive EV strategies. So it seems the market is turning, as they often do.

Meanwhile, new car sales overall aren’t suffering to the same degree. In fact, S&P Global is predicting a 3% increase in industry sales versus 2023. In other words, this isn’t a problem for all new vehicles.

We’ve seen people on social media claiming to have special insider knowledge into how dealerships supposedly can’t sell pickup trucks. But digging into the industry data we find nothing to back up such claims. Maybe there are a few dealers swimming in truck inventory, but it seems overall that’s not true.

Image via Tesla

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