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Investor's Corner

Dissecting Tesla’s Q3 2022 delivery count, and why it missed expectations

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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) released its Delivery and Production numbers for Q3 2022 on Sunday, and while the automaker delivered its most productive quarter as a company yet, it missed Wall Street’s expectations. But, there’s a lot more to take away from the figures than just a company record and a miss on analyst predictions.

For those who missed the press release, Tesla stated on Sunday morning that it had delivered 343,830 vehicles in Q3 2022, with 325,158 of them being Model 3 and Model Y, and the remaining 18,672 being Model S and Model X. Tesla reported that it produced over 22,100 vehicles more than it delivered, citing supply chain and logistics challenges as the culprit for the miss in deliveries. “As our production volumes continue to grow, it is becoming increasingly challenging to secure vehicle transportation capacity and at a reasonable cost during these peak logistics weeks,” it said regarding the final few weeks of the quarter, which have historically been where the company makes more deliveries compared to other weeks due to its end-of-quarter sales push.

Tesla Q3 2022 vehicle delivery and production results: 344k delivered and 365k produced

There’s more to Q3, and here’s why:

Tesla still showed growth, rebounding from a miss in Q2

Tesla missed quarterly delivery growth for the first time in two-and-a-half years in Q2 2022. This was due to “ongoing supply chain challenges and factory shutdowns beyond our control,” Tesla said. As Gigafactory Shanghai battled shutdowns, Tesla clawed its way back to over 254,600 deliveries but did not sustain its streak of consecutive quarters with proven growth.

Nevertheless, Tesla beat Q2 handily and delivered more vehicles in Q3 than it ever has before, and it should. With two new production facilities launched this year in Austin and Germany, Tesla should be on the path to quarterly delivery and production growth for several years. This should not plateau for several years if things run ideally and Tesla, in a perfect world, would not experience any unforeseen interruptions in production. However, the world has weird plans, and the last two years are proof of that.

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Tesla’s rebound to a new quarterly record is undoubtedly putting the company back on the right track. As Q4 begins, the final three months of 2022 will be Tesla’s final chance to not only establish another quarter of growth, but also a chance to beat analyst expectations, which it has done nearly every quarter since 2019.

Model S and Model X production reached its highest levels in three years

Tesla delivered 18,672 Model S and Model X vehicles last quarter, what Sawyer Merritt recognized as the most since Q4 2019.

This is interesting to note, as the vehicles have been in increased demand for the past year and a half since the release of the “Refreshed” and Plaid versions of the cars. Tesla has struggled to ramp and complete deliveries of the Model S and Model X since releasing the new trim levels, but the growth shows that, while they’re still “sentimental,” as CEO Elon Musk said, consumers are still interested in Tesla’s two flagship vehicles.

Tesla is not immune to supply chain issues. They are struggling like other automakers

Tesla put a paragraph in its press release explaining the “lighter” delivery figure it reported on Sunday:

“Historically, our delivery volumes have skewed towards the end of each quarter due to regional batch building of cars.  As our production volumes continue to grow, it is becoming increasingly challenging to secure vehicle transportation capacity and at a reasonable cost during these peak logistics weeks.  In Q3, we began transitioning to a more even regional mix of vehicle builds each week, which led to an increase in cars in transit at the end of the quarter.  These cars have been ordered and will be delivered to customers upon arrival at their destination.”

Tesla is not immune to supply chain issues, despite being incredibly vertically integrated. It seems as if the company did not necessarily get the timing right on some of the deliveries planned for the end of Q3, which bodes negatively for that quarter. However, it is a great way to start Q4, and investors can likely expect an extremely strong final quarter due to this, and the company’s notoriety of having the final three months of the year be its strongest.

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Tesla is feeling the heat from the miss on Wall Street. At the time of writing, shares were down over 8 percent on the day.

Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA Shareholder.

I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”

SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.

It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.

Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.

Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:

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There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX’s biggest earnings test yet lands Tuesday, and Tesla shareholders should be watching

SpaceX reports earnings Tuesday as Wall Street watches AI spending, Starlink growth and Tesla merger

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SpaceX reports third quarter results after the market closes Tuesday, with a webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET streamed on X, and Tesla follows a day later. Bloomberg consensus, cited by Pepperstone, calls for revenue of $12.89 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $6.62 billion and adjusted EPS near $0.15. That would be about 65% growth from the second quarter and SpaceX’s first profitable quarter since its IPO. Analysts expect roughly $6.4 billion from AI and $4.9 billion from Starlink, which is projected to reach 14.3 million consumer subscribers. Capital spending is forecast at $19.6 billion, leaving free cash flow near negative $11.6 billion.

The numbers matter because SpaceX has spent months trying to win over a skeptical market. It priced its record IPO at $135, spiked to $225.64, then sank near $105 in early August. Friday’s close of $146.03 sits about 28% below the June high. The Q2 report beat on revenue at $7.8 billion and put Starlink at 12 million subscribers, but $18.4 billion of capex hurt the stock. Since then SpaceX reached orbit on Starship Flight 14 with 26 Starlink V3 satellites, agreed to buy 800 MHz spectrum for about $8 billion as part of its Starlink Mobile push, and signed a fourth compute hosting deal in four months worth roughly $13 billion a year from December. Management is targeting more than 2 gigawatts of compute by year end and a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate. Evercore ISI, which raised its target to $275, said the quarter may be judged more on those targets than the reported figures

All of this sits under the Tesla merger question. Barclays analyst Dan Levy expects an all stock deal in which SpaceX buys Tesla at a premium, using reference values of $2.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, and said an announcement would need to come by late October or early November to be voted on at Tesla’s December 6 annual meeting. Barclays estimates Musk would hold about 37% of the combined company and 56% of the votes. Musk said in July that combining companies cannot be discussed on an earnings call, but an investor question asking when SpaceX will merge with Tesla is sitting on SpaceX’s Q&A platform, and Teslarati has tracked how the Roadster demo revived the talk.

If a deal happens, Tuesday’s result would effectively set the price Tesla holders would receive. Their shares would convert into SpaceX stock, along with exposure to a company with a heavy investment on AI, while Tesla itself expects 2026 capex above $25 billion. A strong quarter and calmer spending would make that exchange easier to sell. Another round of heavy capex and a falling stock would make it harder.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla’s flying Roadster just revealed something bigger than the car

Analysts say the Roadster demo puts a Tesla and SpaceX merger back on the table.

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Tesla’s new Roadster, upside down and trailing cold gas thruster smoke, flips over a lineup of Tesla vehicles at the Roadster unveiling near Waco, Texas on October 15, 2026. (Image: Tesla)
Tesla’s new Roadster, upside down and trailing cold gas thruster smoke, flips over a lineup of Tesla vehicles at the Roadster unveiling near Waco, Texas on October 15, 2026. (Image: Tesla)

The Roadster unveiling near Waco ended Thursday night, and by Friday morning much of the investor reaction had less to do with the car than with who owns the rocket technology inside it.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said the event “puts the Tesla/SpaceX relationship on the table in a tangible way,” pointing to the propulsion, pressure vessel and control hardware sitting on a Tesla product. Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management called the demo “a ridiculous display of engineering” with “no commercial value” beyond embarrassing traditional automakers, though he said it showed Musk wants the two companies together.

The more specific forecast came a day earlier from Barclays. Analyst Dan Levy told clients a deal could be announced before Tesla’s annual meeting, which must happen by December 6, and that an announcement in late October or early November could make shareholder approval harder. Barclays expects SpaceX to be the buyer in an all stock deal, with Tesla holders receiving SpaceX shares at a premium, based on market values of roughly $2.1 trillion for SpaceX and $1.5 trillion for Tesla. If nothing lands around the meeting, the bank still sees an announcement within 6 to 12 months.

The Roadster demo just added more weight to merger speculations. Tesla’s demo used cold gas thrusters and pressure tanks of the kind SpaceX uses on Falcon 9, and Musk described the car as a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX engineers, as we mentioned in our breakdown of the three Roadster configurations.


Musk has not publicly addressed a deal since the event, as far as we have seen. His most direct answer remains the one he gave at the All In Summit, when he said that with so much collaboration, “who can imagine what action one might take” without ruling anything out. Ives has held to a 2027 timeline since his March note, and Musk pushed back on the China piece of the speculation when ARK floated a year end announcement in August.

The next test is Tesla’s third quarter earnings call on October 21. However, we recall in July that Musk told analysts, “we can’t talk about combining companies and that kind of thing on an earnings call,” so a clear answer wouldn’t be expected.

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