Tesla delivered 83,500 vehicles in Q3 2018 despite “logistics hell”

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On Tuesday morning, Tesla released its production and delivery results for Q3 2018. During those three months, the company built a total of 80,142 electric vehicles, of which 53,239 were the somewhat more affordable Model 3. Over the same time period, the company delivered even more—83,500 vehicles in total. Overall, 55,480 of these were Model 3s compared to 14,470 Model Ss and 13,190 Model Xs.

That’s a big increase over Q2 2018, when Tesla delivered 40,768 vehicles, and it’s no doubt welcome news for a company that has been rocked by scandal of late. Tesla has recently navigated numerous resignations among senior staff and a now-settled lawsuit with the SEC over insider trading following CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter-induced manipulation of the stock price.

These latest results from Tesla are solely limited to vehicle production numbers, so we can’t yet say if the company has kept its promise from Q2 2018 to be cashflow positive. In its favor is the fact that those Q3 Model 3s were “limited to higher-priced variants”—Musk has previously stated on Twitter that Tesla could not yet afford to build a $35,000 version and survive.