Tesla announced its delivery numbers today for the third quarter 2016 and confirmed that it delivered a record-breaking number of vehicles: 24,500. The company maintained its guidance of 50,000 vehicles for the second half of 2016 – meaning that it hopes to deliver roughly the same number of vehicles in the last 3 months of the year.

They are off to a good start for the fourth quarter with already 5,500 vehicles in transit to customers at the end of the third quarter, which ended September 30 (last Friday), and those will only be counted as deliveries in Q4.

The company achieved a record-breaking quarter by delivering almost twice as many Model X SUVs as last quarter and also through a good quarter for the Model S – the best quarter since Q4 2015.

Breakdown of deliveries for Q3 2016:

Model S: 15,800

Model X: 8,700

Tesla Model S and X global deliveries since the market introduction of the Model S in 2012:

Tesla is now producing and selling vehicles at a rate of roughly 100,000 per year. It’s a 5x increase in capacity over a 3 year period. Now Tesla wants another 5x increase in order to produce 500,000 vehicles per year within the first year of Model 3 production, but it has to do it in 2 years instead of 3 this time.

Tesla Q3 2016 Production and Deliveries Tesla delivered approximately 24,500 vehicles in Q3, of which 15,800 were Model S and 8,700 were Model X. This was an increase of just over 70% from last quarter’s deliveries of 14,402. Our Q3 delivery count should be viewed as slightly conservative, as we only count a car as delivered ifit is transferred to the customer and all paperwork is correct. In addition to Q3 deliveries, about 5,500 vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of the quarter. These will not be counted as deliveries until Q4. Production rose to 25,185 vehicles in Q3. This was an increase of 37% from Q2 production of 18,345. We expect Q4 deliveries and production to be at or slightly above Q3, despite Q4 being a shorter quarter and the challenge of delivering vehicles in winter weather over holidays. Guidance of 50,000 vehicles for the second half of 2016 is maintained. Finally, we note that starting in Q3, our quarterly financial releases will no longer include non-GAAP revenue and related financial metrics resulting from vehicles leased through our banking partners or that include resale value guarantees. We will, however, continue to provide additional supplemental information to investors to provide insights into our business. * * * * * Tesla vehicle deliveries represent only one measure of the company’s financial performance and should not be relied on as an indicator of quarterly financial results, which depend on a variety of factors, including the cost of sales, foreign exchange movements and mix of directly leased vehicles.

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