Electric automaker Tesla Motors Inc said on Tuesday production last year surged 64 percent year-on-year, but the company missed its delivery target in the final three months.
Tesla produced 24,882 vehicles in the final quarter of the year, resulting in total annual production of 83,922 vehicles.
Because of issues around the transition to new Autopilot auto-driving hardware, “production was weighted more heavily towards the end of the quarter than we had originally planned” and nearly 2,800 vehicles were not delivered, the company said in a statement.
As a result, the share price fell 1.83 percent to US$213.02 in after-hours trading.
However, the company said it hit its production goal and had 6,450 vehicles in transit to customers that would count toward its first-quarter deliveries.
“We were ultimately able to recover and hit our production goal, but the delay in production resulted in challenges that impacted quarterly deliveries, including, among other things, cars missing shipping cutoffs for Europe and Asia,” the company said.
Even if the vehicles were fully paid for, the company did not count them as deliveries in the fourth quarter unless the customer received the vehicle and completed all the paperwork.
Vehicle demand late in the year was particularly strong, with net orders for the Model S and Model X at an all-time record, 52 percent higher than the fourth quarter of 2015.
Company founder Elon Musk said in October last year that he expected profitability in the fourth quarter.
Tesla, known for its high-end cars which sell for upward of US$70,000, is also working on a more affordable model at about half the price which is aimed at expanding the market for electric vehicles, as it seeks to boost the range between charges. It has already received 400,000 orders for the more economical model.
General Motors Co is hoping to challenge Tesla’s lower-priced model with its own Bolt electric vehicle.
Chevrolet promises the Bolt can travel more than 320km on a single charge, also comparable to the expected range of the Tesla Model 3.
Tesla is including its self-driving technology into all the electric cars it makes, running it in “shadow” mode to gather data on whether it is safer than having people in control.
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