IHS Automotive Analyst Says 153% Increase in Tesla Registrations For October Due To Limited Supply, Delay In Registering Vehicles

When asked why vehicle registrations for the Tesla Motors Inc TSLA Model S were up 153 percent year over year for the month of October, IHS Automotive Analyst Thomas Libby told Benzinga that it was probably due to a number of factors.

The first thing Libby speculated caused the spike in registration was supply. Before the October increase, registrations were down 22 percent for the whole year.
He pointed out that Tesla started selling vehicles overseas, but still only produces them in California.

“One significant possibility is that they were diverting units to Asia, so they didn’t have the units here to sell that they had a year ago,” he said.

So when Tesla finally did get the inventory, Libby explained that there was a sharp increase in sales due to the pent-up demand, which in turn caused an increase in registrations.

Another possible reason for the spike is the delay between purchasing a vehicle and getting it registered.

“They had publicly said that they had a very, very good September,” he said. “We think what happened was that there were a lot of vehicles sold in late September that got registered in October.”

This kind of thing usually happens at the end of the year, according to Libby, where consumers purchase vehicles in December and don’t register them until January.