Tesla Delivers 486,432 Vehicles In Q3, Handily Beating Wall Street Forecasts

Tesla handily beat expectations on deliveries for Q3 this morning, handing the electric vehicle maker a sizable beat against Wall Street forecasts.

The company delivered 486,532 vehicles during the quarter, well above the roughly 461,000 units analysts surveyed by FactSet had been expecting. Tesla’s own compilation of sell-side estimates had put the consensus at 461,974 vehicles, meaning actual deliveries came in roughly 24,500 vehicles, or about 5.3%, above that figure.

Of the 486,532 vehicles delivered, Model 3/Y accounted for 478,237 vehicles.

The better than anticipated result helped Tesla shares rise about 2% Friday morning.

Tesla’s quarterly delivery report remains one of the clearest measures of the health of its core business, even as Elon Musk has increasingly argued that the company’s long-term value will be determined by businesses that have little to do with selling conventional electric vehicles.

Musk has spent much of the past year directing investor attention toward autonomous driving, artificial intelligence and Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot. He has repeatedly described Tesla as an AI and robotics company rather than simply an automaker, while arguing that autonomous vehicles and Optimus could eventually become much larger businesses than vehicle sales.

Musk has also continued to emphasize Tesla’s planned Cybercab network and the expansion of its autonomous driving technology as central pieces of the company’s future.

For the time being, however, automobiles remain Tesla’s primary source of revenue and cash flow. That makes quarterly deliveries an important indicator of consumer demand, pricing conditions and utilization at the company’s factories in the United States, China and Germany. 

The result also arrives as Musk continues to divide his attention among several companies. His other major venture, SpaceX, recently recorded an important success with Starship's first orbital flight, moving the company closer to commercialization.