Tesla Delivered Over 25,000 Vehicles In Q1 Up 69% Over Last Year

Nothing is straight-forward with Tesla...some experts have pointed out that this might not be the good news that, on the surface, it seems to be...

"What was responsible for this sizable improvement? Is it possible that the simple removal of one word in the way that Tesla delivers its "delivered vehicle" metric could be responsible for the addition of billions of dollars in market cap.

Previously, the company had always reported this number by deliveries to "end" customers. This is from the company's Q2 2016 PR.

This weekend, when presented with the delivery data we (as well as many on Twitter) noticed that the word "end" had been removed and didn't appear in the PR at all.

Generally, nobody just arbitrarily removes a word from an SEC filing without there being good reason.

If securities lawyers or the company chose to remove the word for a reason, that is going to open up a can of worms and a whole new slate of questions. Removing the word "end" from customer would lead us to believe that the Company could now be counting models that it ships to distributors and not just the people who wind up ultimately driving the car, the "end" customers. If the company is changing the way it records this number, it is similar to a revenue recognition alteration that needs to be defined very clearly for shareholders so people don't get the impression that all of these vehicles are on the road and being driven around by Tesla customers when they are possibly sitting on a lot somewhere.

If it turns out this definition was altered from "end" customer to "customer" for the purposes of recognizing more deliveries, it will be viewed by us as a massive red flag, especially given the fact that no pertinent disclosure was made to shareholders about the reason this language is changed. Again, we have no proof that this change was anything but administrative and a possible mistake at this point. However, if it comes to light in the future that this was the cause for increased deliveries, Tesla will have put its much-needed credibility on trial and we would be alarmed as shareholders.

You are missing something - MRE30 - Tesla does NOT HAVE any distributors - they only sell directly - so ALL sales are to END users. They cannot count cars in inventory on a lot - as sales to a "dealer" - because they don't have "dealers" either.

^FUD

Tesla is now the most valuable American automaker.

They aren't delivered until they are sold. Conventional auto manufacturers consider a car "sold" when delivered to the dealer, since the dealer must purchase it from the manufacturer. Tesla doesn't do that, so any delivery is to the final owner.

True, compared to VW (or most other manufacturers) they don't sell a lot of units. Time will tell if the Model 3 alters that.

A Golf is what, a $20k car with a 10% margin. Are you really going to compare that with $90k+ cars that have a 25% margin?