After a tough 2018, Jessica Caldwell, executive director of industry analysis at data service Edmunds, is one of the bears, warning that “Tesla is starting the year with a bitter dose of reality of what it means to be a grown-up car company.”
At first glance, that viewpoint might seem hard to understand. After all, the electric auto maker delivered about 245,000 vehicles in 2018, not only marking an all-time record but nearly matching what it had sold during its entire existence through the end of 2017. And demand rose every single quarter of the year, October-December deliveries exceeding those of the previous quarter by 8 percent.
Tesla is now the world’s number-one producer of battery-electric vehicles, handily surpassing established manufacturers like Nissan — which launched the world’s first mainstream BEV, the Leaf, in 2010 — and General Motors. But there’s the rub.
After having worked out most of the kinks at its Gigafactory battery plant in Reno, Nevada and its Fremont assembly plant, Tesla has been humming at a rate of about 1,000 battery cars a day, or 6,000 a week on a six-day schedule. And despite Musk’s ambitious forecasts, that may be more than the market can bear, said Joe Phillippi, head of AutoTrends Consulting, and a veteran Wall Street analyst.
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