Elon Musk said Tesla Inc would slow down deliveries in Norway, the automaker’s best market per capita, days before the electric car maker is due to report quarterly sales that investors watch so closely.
Tesla’s chief executive officer made the announcement in a Twitter message on Saturday, in response to a report that local authorities had ordered trucks carrying Teslas off the road more than half a dozen times.
One truck not stopped by authorities ended up in an accident, which crushed two Model S vehicles on the trailer, the blog Electrek said.
“It is clear that we are exceeding the local logistics capacity due to batch build and delivery,” Musk said in the tweet. “Customer happiness & safety matter more than a few extra cars this quarter.”
The Palo Alto, California-based automaker switched the Norwegian ports that it ships to, requiring the use of more trucks to get the cars to stores and service centers, the blog posting said.
Norway is Tesla’s third-biggest market in the world after the US and China, with revenue from the country more than doubling to US$823 million last year. The country exempts electric cars from purchase taxes and road tolls and has invested heavily in charging infrastructure. About 21 percent of vehicles bought there last year were battery-electric.
Tesla is already facing difficulties in introducing its mass-market Model 3 vehicle, the linchpin of Musk’s plan to bring electric vehicles to the masses. Ramping up production has taken longer and been more challenging than originally anticipated.
The company is targeting a weekly Model 3 production rate of 2,500 sedans by the end of this month and 5,000 by the end of June.
Separately, shareholders have approved an ambitious pay package for Musk that could net him more than US$50 billion if he meets lofty milestones over the next decade. Tesla has yet to turn a full-year net profit even though it has been in business for 15 years.
A company filing on Wednesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission showed that shareholders supported the pay deal by a large margin.
Tesla says the all-or-nothing package is worth US$2.6 billion at current stock values, but that would rise dramatically if Musk meets 12 incremental goals, including raising the company’s market capitalization 10-fold to US$650 billion and targets to increase adjusted pre-tax income and revenue.
If the goals are reached, Tesla would be the fourth-most-valuable US company and Musk would be among the richest people in the world.
Additional reporting by AP
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