Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk said on Tuesday that he sees “room for improvement” in the company’s deliveries despite fears of dimming demand within the EV market.
What Happened: “Room for improvement, I suppose,” Musk wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. The CEO was responding to a Tesla enthusiast who noted that the company sold ten times more EVs in the U.S. than any other EV maker in the three quarters of this year.
Till the end of the third quarter, Tesla sold 493,513 EVs in the U.S., with Model 3 and Y vehicles accounting for a majority of the sales, the enthusiast noted, citing a study.
Why It Matters: Musk’s optimistic comment comes on the heels of other major players like General Motors Co GM and Ford Motor Co F scaling down their EV targets.
Ford, for one, said its company will delay its $12 billion EV investment including by delaying its EV battery plant in Kentucky. While scaling EVs, the company will continue to focus on combustion engine and hybrid vehicles, company CEO Jim Farley said during the company’s third quarter earnings call, while adding that it does not see the market for some of its popular combustion engine vehicles like the Maverick trucks and the F-150 go to EV.
General Motors, meanwhile, has scrapped its plans to develop affordable EVs under $30K with Honda Motor Co. It also withdrew its EV production targets, including both the 100,000 EV target the company had set for the second half this year as well as the cumulative 400,000 targets the company had set for from 2022 to the first half of 2024. The company did not provide new targets.
Musk himself said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call that Tesla is holding back on going ‘full tilt’ with its Mexico factory plans owing to the high-interest environment. He further warned that interest rates could reduce demand as they make EVs more unaffordable for consumers.
"If the macroeconomic conditions are stormy, even if the best ship is still going to have tough times, the weaker ships will sink. We’re not going to sink. But even a great ship in a storm has challenges," the CEO had said.
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