Liam Denning, Columnist

Tesla’s Numbers Keep the Drama Alive

It hit third-quarter production targets, but there are warning signs.

October 2, 2018 at 3:50 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Even Tesla’s production updates come with drama.
Photographer: Guus Schoonewille/AFP/Getty Images

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After the drama of the past couple of months, it’s almost merciful to just read some numbers from Tesla Inc. It still makes sense to pay attention to the language, though.

Tesla’s hotly anticipated third-quarter production update landed Tuesday morning. The headline is that it met the guidance given in its second-quarter letter to investors. Model 3 production of more than 53,000 was almost exactly in the middle of the forecast range. Deliveries tripled to almost 56,000. Meanwhile, output of the Models S and X ticked up, and deliveries did indeed “accelerate” as promised, rising 24 percent versus the prior quarter.