SLUMPING DEMAND IN NETHERLANDS AND NORWAY In most countries, there’s usually at least a month lag time to see public data on car sales. That’s not the case in Norway and the Netherlands, because both countries report each day’s sales the next day on a public website. Norway in particular is important because it’s by far the largest market for electric cars in Europe. Thanks to huge government subsidies, electric vehicles were 58% of total car sales in March. Tesla had a strong first quarter in both Norway and the Netherlands, as ships full of the first Model 3s arrived to meet the backlog of demand, making it the best-selling electric car in both markets. Since then, sales have fallen off a cliff. As my friend Anton Wahlman reported last month... April is off to a horrible start for Tesla in
DEPOSITS PLUMMET In past years, Musk was able to attract
hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits – which are effectively free unsecured loans to the company – by announcing a new car. Yet when he tried that last month with the Model Y reveal, it was a total bust. When an analyst on the call asked why customer deposits were down, Musk dodged the question, answering, “I think we don’t want to comment on the granularity of deposits. Again, people read too much into this. We’re not playing off the Model Y because we’re just not in production so you can’t really read anything into Model Y orders at this point.” What nonsense! When Tesla was deluged by customer deposits for the Model 3 (which can be seen in the chart below, Musk was tweeting about it constantly. His silence now speaks volumes.
$1,000
TESLA CUSTOMER DEPOSITS
$800
$600
$400
$200
$0
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
26
May 2019
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