Tesla produced more than 440,000 vehicles and delivered more than 420,000 in the first quarter of 2023 – record numbers for the brand.
The company has released its first-quarter production and sales tallies ahead of its first-quarter financial results. It’ll release these and host a Q&A session after market close on April 19.
Total production volume was 440,808 vehicles, with 422,875 deliveries.
Those are slight increases over Tesla’s fourth-quarter 2022 results, when it produced 439,701 vehicles and delivered 405,278.
“We continued to transition towards a more even regional mix of vehicle builds, including Model S/X vehicles in transit to EMEA and APAC,” the company said in its press release.
Tesla doesn’t break down individual models, factories or regions in its sales and production tallies, but the Model 3 and Model Y together accounted for over 95 per cent of its production and over 97 per cent of its sales.
According to data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), Tesla sold 140,453 Chinese-built vehicles in January and February.
While March data isn’t yet available, it does appear likely vehicles out of Tesla’s Shanghai plant could have accounted for over half of the brand’s global sales.
In addition to its Fremont and Austin plants in the US and its Shanghai plant in China, Tesla has a factory near Berlin in Germany and announced this year it would open a new plant near Monterrey, Mexico.
Tesla had rolled out price cuts in markets like China and the US over the past few months. For example, Tesla in the US slashed the price of its entry-level Model Y by 20 per cent.
The price cuts in China led to an all-out price war, with Chinese brands BYD, Nio and XPeng all cutting prices and foreign brands Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen also following suit.
There was less of a price war in the US, but there was a slight skirmish as Ford reduced prices of its Model Y-rivalling Mustang Mach-E.
