By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
I want to bring you some breaking news. Tesla falling. Its first quarter deliveries coming well below estimates. Yahoo Finance’s Pras Subramanian is here now with more on the automaker’s start to the year. Pras, what do we know from these numbers?
00:13 Pras Subramanian
Yeah, big delivery miss here. Kind of a, kind of a, I don’t want to say shocking but it’s a big miss. 336,681 deliveries versus 390,000 or so estimated. The company produced 362,000 vehicles and deployed about 10.4 gigawatts of energy deployments. But they had a they had a statement. They said, while the changeover of the Model Y lines across all four of our factories led to a loss of several weeks of production in Q1, the ramp of the new Model Y continues to go well, the company said in a statement. Well, that is true that the new Model Y came out in March. You lost some of those, you know, the changeover, people weren’t buying the old Model Ys as they’re waiting for the new one potentially. But still this is sort of indicating this these demand concerns are materializing. We’re seeing them in this recent Q1 report. I mean, this is a miss compared to last year Q1, I believe. We’ve been we’ve been noting the fact that sales in places like Europe, China, and even in the U.S. have been coming down in terms of registration data that we’ve been seeing trickling through. So we’re finally seeing them materializing here in Q1. Not, Q1 is usually a weaker period for them in terms of sales but this particular number is not great for Tesla. And you’re seeing the stock down about 5% in pre-market trading.
02:13 Speaker A
And also, even if it had met that higher estimate, it still would be less than BYD in the quarter, right? So BYD continues to surpass it in the number of deliveries.
02:23 Pras Subramanian
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s exactly right.
02:25 Speaker A
I think they were what? 416,000 just in their EV business, and they make other types of cars.
02:30 Pras Subramanian
Right. Right, right, right. I mean, they’re doing quite well there in China. I mean, they also have heavy EVs that cost $15,000, right? So they have a different sort of customer and product offering, but you’re absolutely right. Last year, Tesla barely squeaked out an EV win versus BYD. This year, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. Uh, if you’re if you’re a Tesla investor or analyst, that’s bullish on the stock. You’re you’re hoping to see that new cheaper EV come out to hopefully boost sales and numbers of key regions, potentially China. You’re also hoping to see more on that, uh, the autonomous deployment that Musk has been talking about. Apparently, also Musk has been talking about Optimus robot stuff. So, you know, trying to like distract from what’s happening with the key core auto business, which right now is sort of slowing down just a bit here in Q1.
03:34 Speaker A
What do we know about how much this problem can be fixed through those other product offerings, the cheaper Model Y, for example, versus this being rooted in some sort of backlash to Elon Musk, which can’t be fixed through new product?
03:51 Pras Subramanian
Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s the big question people are asking is as long as Musk stays first and foremost upfront with Dodge, does that kind of keep this weight on the on on business and also on the stock? Would that, will that new cheaper EV help boost sales, no matter what the politics of Musk are? Will he, will Musk eventually leave on the White House and go back to running the auto business, which which Trump hinted at a couple days ago? So I think that those are all this this mix of questions about demand, about the Tesla brand image, new products, uh, deployment of autonomous and Austin and place like California are all sort of in the mix for Tesla right now. As investors sort of have to parse through all of it to see, hey, is this stock a buy right now? Is it is it is it a is it a challenge company? That’s the sort of outlook right now for the company.
04:55 Speaker A
And even if he goes back, has the damage already been done? That’s a question worth asking.
05:03 Pras Subramanian
Right. Right. People tend to forget in America, though.
05:08 Speaker A
That is true. We have short memories.
05:12 Pras Subramanian
Yeah, exactly.